“But, Hazel darling,” he pleaded eagerly, “I think you are setting up a kind of—er—bogey. The old dad is the dearest old chap in the world, and a jolly sight too good to me, and for me.”
She looked at him and softened. She liked him more—more than ever—for what he had just said. Perhaps she showed it.
“I can quite believe that,” she answered. “Still, it doesn’t alter what I say.”
His face fell. So blank was it that for a moment he felt positively miserable.
“But, Hazel dearest, don’t you care for me a little bit?”
Her heart went out to him.
“Dick, you know I am very fond of you,” she answered, adding to herself, “as who could help being?”—“No—no, not yet,” putting out a hand as he made a step forward.
“But—now we are engaged,” he protested rapturously.
“We are not,” she answered, and his face fell again. “And the only condition on which we will be is the one I told you. Get your father’s consent.”
“It strikes me, Hazel, that you are forgetting I am not exactly under age. I am quite independent into the bargain.”