"Yes, by Jove! Even if the man higher up happens to be Watson Grider. I don't mind the kidnapping so much for myself, but the man doesn't live, Lucetta, who can make you go through what you have gone through in the past month and get away with it."
"I don't ask you to fight for me, Donald," she interposed. "And, besides, it hasn't been all bad—or has it?"
"We have agreed every little while, between jolts, that it hasn't. I'll go further now, and say that it is the finest, truest, happiest thing that has ever happened to me—hardships and all."
"You mean because it has given you new working material?"
"No; I wasn't thinking so much of that, though the new material, and more especially the new angle, are worth something, of course. But there are bigger consequences than these—for me—Lucetta." Then he broke off and plunged headlong into something else. "How much of an income should a man have before he can ask a girl to marry him? Does the Domestic Science course include any such practical data as that?"
"Is that all you are waiting for?" she inquired, ignoring his question. "Have you asked the girl?"
"No; I haven't asked her yet. And the money is the main thing that I shall be waiting for from this time on."
"I should say it would depend entirely upon the girl—upon what she had been used to."
"I think—she hasn't—been used to having things made so very soft for her," he answered rather uncertainly. "But she has at least one ambition that is going to ask for a good chunk of money at first, until she—until she gets ready to—to settle down."
"And that is——?"