"I couldn't," she said, earnestly, "marry any one I wasn't very fond of. And one can't be fond of a person one's only seen twice."
"Can't you?" he said, a little sadly.
"No," she answered. "I think it's very fine of you to offer me this—just to get me out of a bother. And I'm sorry I thought you were being horrid. I'll tell you something. I've always thought that even if I cared very much for some one I should be almost afraid to marry him unless I knew him very, very well. Girls do make such frightful mistakes. You ought to see a man every day for a year, and then, perhaps, you'd know if you could really bear to live with him all your life."
Instead of answering her directly, he said: "You would love the life in the caravan. Think of the camp—making a fire of sticks and cooking your supper under the stars, and the great moonlit nights, and sleeping in pine woods and waking in the dawn and curling yourself up in your blanket and going to sleep again till I shouted out that the fire was alight and breakfast nearly ready."
"I wish I could come with you without having to be married."
"Come, then," he said. "Come on any terms. I'll take you as a sister if I'm not to take you as a wife."
"Do you mean it? Really?" she said. "Oh, why shouldn't I? I believe you would take me—and I should be perfectly free then. I've got a little money of my own that my godmother left me. I was twenty-one the other day. I don't get it, of course. My father says it costs that to keep me. But if I were to run away he would have to give it to me, wouldn't he? And then I could pay you back what you spent on me. Oh, I wish I could. Will you really take me?"
But he had had time to think. "No," he said, "on reflection, I don't think I will."
But she did not hear him, for as he spoke she spoke, too. "Hush!" she said. "Look — look there."
Across the park, near the house, lights were moving.