Then, with a swift gesture, he suddenly drained his whisky and soda to its dregs, put the glass down jauntily as men do on the stage, and walked, feeling younger than for ten whole years, to his writing-desk. He gave a happy laugh as he took out some paper.
For he had got a great idea. He was going to propose to Miss Hallam on paper! He was going to write it all down and see if it looked awful rubbish.... He was enjoying himself to-night in a quite new way.
"DEAR MISS HALLAM," he began and added "My" in front. Then as he saw the meaning that might bear he laughed again. He knew it was not right just now to laugh, and marked it as an interesting fact. Then, nervous of detection, he took a new sheet and started—
"MY DEAR MISS HALLAM,
"You will be surprised to hear from me.
"The fact of the matter is—I find myself getting very bald now that I really have to use my pen for something that matters!—I have been thinking a lot of my jolly days in Devonshire, the tennis, the sea-walks, the picnics, everything with all of you, and (if I'm allowed to say it) especially with you yourself."
Here he leant back and read what he had written. It was not literature but he felt satisfied. He took up his pen again and wrote—
"I don't know that it's usual, but I am rather reserved and not too romantic, so that I am writing to ask whether you could think of being my wife. There has never been any one in my whole life of whom I have thought as I have thought of you these last five weeks. I could never tell you how I feel in words, and I see now that I can't on paper, but if you think in any way that you could grow fond of me, I am convinced that we could be immensely happy. I don't know that I have much to offer you; but if you talk to your mother about this, as no doubt you will, you must assure her that I can give you a comfortable home and that I hope, as the years go by, to make myself something of a name.
"I will say no more now. I shouldn't have dared say so much, if I had not thought that we got on rather well last month, and that if you did not welcome this letter, you would at any rate be able to forgive it.
"Yours,
"HUBERT BRETT."