At this rather ironically put question, the very soul of pretty Chris seemed to flash through her eyes.
“No, indeed I’m not.”
Then Mr. Bradfield, who had lost his nervousness, and who went about his wooing with a will now that he had fairly started, changed his tone. In a voice which had become surprisingly tender—or which perhaps only sounded tender because he did not shout so much as usual—he said——
“Wouldn’t you like to make a man happy, little Chris?”
She was too womanly to hear this speech quite unmoved, even from a man she did not care about. So she evaded it.
“I don’t think a woman can make a man happy,” she said.
“I don’t think every woman could. But I’m sure you could; at least, you could make me happy.”
“Well, if I really have the power of giving happiness, which I very much doubt,” said Chris, laughing, “I think I ought to exercise it on some man who hasn’t so many sources of happiness as you have already, Mr. Bradfield.”
“Sources of happiness,” echoed he scoffingly. “And, pray, what are they?”
“You have your collection, your curiosities, your pictures, your first editions!”