"Hold on, now," expostulated Mr. Dimmerly. "Nitroglycerine doesn't go off half so quick as you of late. I haven't told you why he is afraid you love him."
"What other reason can he have save that he doesn't love me, or thinks I am unfit to be a clergyman's wife?"
"He has another reason,—one that will devolve upon you the necessity of deciding some very important questions. Are you old and mature enough?"
"O uncle!" exclaimed Lottie, impatiently tapping the floor with her foot. "You ought to be made Grand Inquisitor General. You have kept me upon the rack of suspense—it seems an hour."
"Hold on, little firebrand. Questions concerning a lifetime should not be decided in a moment. You had better take a few years—certainly, a few months—to think over what I am going to tell you. Frank worships the ground you tread on. He does not give you the little remnant of a heart that has been left after dozens of flirtations with other girls. You have the whole of his big, unworldly heart, and from what I know of him, or, rather, his mother, you always will; but he is so unselfish—so unlike the rest of us—that he won't ask you to exchange your life of wealth and luxury for his life of toil, poverty, and comparative exile. So, while I believe he will idolize your memory all his days, he is hoping that you won't suffer any, but will soon be able to forget him. Of course I feigned profound ignorance as to your feelings, and left him in a pitiable state of distress. But he finally concluded that, even if you did love him a little, it would be very unmanly to take advantage of your feelings to get you into the awful scrape of a home missionary's life."
As Mr. Dimmerly proceeded in this last speech, joy came into Lottie's face like the dawn of a June morning. Tears gathered slowly in her eyes, but their source was happiness, not sorrow. By the time he concluded, she had buried her burning face in her hands.
"Well," said her uncle, after a moment, "what's to be done I hardly know. He is just like his mother. If he thinks it isn't right to speak, tortures could not wring a word out of him. I don't see but you will have to propose yourself—"
"Propose myself! Never," said she, springing to her feet.
"What will you do, then?—sit and look at each other, and fade away like two dying swans?"
"No, indeed," said Lottie, dancing about the room, and brushing the tears from her face, like spray. "He shall propose to me, and very humbly, too. I have the key to the problem, now. My hand is now on the helm of this big ship of war, and you shall see how I will manage. He shall do just what I want him to, without knowing it. He shall—"