"But you ARE my girl, by right of discovery. By the way, you're not anybody else's girl, are you?"
"Just what do you mean by that?"
"Well, in other words, then, are you engaged, betrothed, plighted, promised, bespoke——"
Patty burst out laughing. "I'm not any of those things," she said, "but, if ever I am, I shall be bespoke. I think that's the loveliest word! Fancy being anybody's Bespoke!"
"Of course, it's up to me to give you an immediate opportunity," said Cameron, sighing. "But somehow I don't quite dare bespeak you on such short acquaintance."
"Faint heart——"
"Oh, it isn't that! I'm brave enough. But I'm an awfully punctilious man. If I were going to bespeak you, now, I should think it my duty to go first to your father and correctly ask his permission to pay my addresses to his daughter."
"Good gracious! How do you pay addresses? I never had an address paid to me in my life."
"Shall I show you how?" And Cameron jumped up and fell on one knee before Patty, with a comical expression of a make-believe love-sick swain.
Patty dearly loved fooling, and she smiled back at him roguishly, and just at that moment Philip Van Reypen came into the room.