"If I were so poor as all that, darling, I shouldn't be asking you to marry me," said Jim. "I'm better off than you think, for as I told you, I've been doing fairly well lately, and I guess if one of us two ever has to cook it will be I. We might have to do that sometimes, but it will only be if we're camping somewhere."
"I do hope so. It would be glorious!" I exclaimed.
"We can have the cottage or the flat all right, or maybe even both if things go on as well as they're going now," he said, "and there's nothing on God's earth I won't do to make you happy. Heavens! I should think so, after what you're doing for me--trusting me, without knowing any more of me than you've seen in these few weeks——"
"I'd have trusted you to the world's end, after the day you jumped overboard and saved the little boy. Besides, you were you; and I'd have trusted you just the same if you hadn't."
"Bless you, my angel. But think of the marriages you might have made."
"I couldn't have made more than one, at least I hope not," said I, flippantly. "I could never have married anyone but you, so I should have had to be an old maid if you hadn't asked me, and think how awful that would have been. You don't regret asking me, do you?"
"Regret? Well--it doesn't bear talking of. I suppose I ought to be able to say that I'd meant to keep my love to myself, and it only sprang out on an ungovernable impulse. But it wouldn't be true if I did. I always meant to ask you, from the very first--though I had little enough hope, even up to to-day, that it would be anything more than friendship on your part. But oh, how hard I did mean to try for you. My one virtue was to wait until you had seen enough of other men--men of a different sort--for you to be sure you didn't prefer one of them. And when accident had put you very near me, I did manage not to lose my head and speak, while you were, in a way, under my protection, for that would have been brutal. But Heaven knows--and Miss Woodburn knows--that I came mighty near it once or twice. I'm thankful I didn't. Now you know the best and worst of the other sort of man, and the best and worst of me. You see the kind of people whose blood runs in my veins, and still you are ready to say that my people shall be your people. I'm not afraid of anything that can happen now."
"You needn't be," I said, slipping my other hand into his--for he had one of them already. "Mother may be vexed with me for going against her wishes, but she will have to forgive me--or even if she doesn't, I shall have you."
"I think she will forgive you, darling," said Jim. "I will make her forgive you."
"I believe you could make anybody do anything!" I cried. "Sally will be glad about this, I know. I can see now that she must always have hoped for it to happen, though I didn't realise what she meant at the time. But we had such a talk in the Park the day we met you, about marrying for love. And she advised me that it was the only thing to do. Oh, I am sorry for everybody who isn't in love, aren't you? And that reminds me, I must try and make dear little Patty in love with Mr. Walker. You'll help me, won't you?"