As he looked at her swift images of love and marriage flitted across his brain. Somehow his loneliness was borne in upon him, and with this realization there came as a sudden flash the consciousness that he could marry. Long ago he had put all this one side, and in his grief over the loss of mother and sister it had never once occurred to him that he was free. The knowledge almost overwhelmed him now, and in his bewilderment for the moment he lost sight of his ideal. Like most reticent men, he cherished an ideal. Since meeting Constance Leigh, unconsciously to himself that ideal had grown very like her. But now he was sitting beside a fascinating young girl—for fascinating she was to Steve, even in her brusqueness and plainness of speech; a mere child, as it were, who was without home and without the protection of love and parental care, and as he looked into her eyes, still wet with tears, he felt his heart go out to her.
“Listen to me, Nannie,” he said, taking her hand once more. “I am a very lonely man. I need a wife——”
“Come, ducky, come and be killed,” flashed through Nannie's mind.
“I think you need me and I'm sure I need you.”
“How?” thought Nannie; “fricasseed or boiled?”
“If you would let me I would take you and try——”
“Fry, you mean,” said Nannie mentally as he hesitated.
Then with a sudden whirl, peculiar to her gusty temperament, she said to herself:
“He's proposing, and I needn't marry that hideous creature!”
She caught her breath and pressed her hands together.