'Steady! Spring has passed.'
'And to-night I heard a queer thing about you.'
'What?' she asked in an engaging manner of invitation to confidence.
'That you are to be married. I have it on the word of my landlady.'
'I?'
'So it is rumored in the village.'
'I am glad my family is not so anxious to thrust me off as my friends are.'
'And you are unwilling to be thrust off, as you put it?'
'Married? No, not unwilling; unprepared. It is so very final, you know. A woman gives up everything.'
'Not necessarily.'