“You must let me marry you.”
Ruperta stared, and began to blush crimson.
“Will you, cousin?”
“Of course not, child. The idea!”
“Oh, Ruperta,” cried the boy in dismay, “surely you don't mean to marry anybody else but me!”
“Would that make you very unhappy, then?”
“You know it would, wretched for my life.”
“I should not like to do that. But I disapprove of early marriages. I mean to wait till I'm nineteen; and that is three years nearly.”
“It is a fearful time; but if you will promise not to marry anybody else, I suppose I shall live through it.”
Ruperta, though she made light of Compton's offer, was very proud of it (it was her first). She told her mother directly.