"But, Mr. Armstrong," gasped Laline, "you must be in fun! Do you know that I am only sixteen?"
"Well, plenty of your friends over here get married at sixteen," he returned, "and my own mother was married before her seventeenth birthday!"
"But I don't want to marry you!"
"Not to go to England, to live in a big, beautiful house under my care and that of my old uncle, one of the worthiest and kindest old gentlemen alive, who is simply longing to welcome you as his daughter, and writes to me about you nearly every day?"
"Why, what can you mean?" she was beginning, when he drew from his pocket the letter from his uncle which he had received that morning, and, carefully folding down one portion, held it before her eyes.
The lines which the girl read ran thus:—
"Give my love to Laline, and tell her how much I look forward to welcoming her in my house. If she is like your description, she must indeed be a sweet and womanly young creature. Be sure to buy her all that she requires. I want my niece to enter her new home in the style that befits a lady of gentle birth and careful training."
"I can't understand it!" exclaimed Laline, bewildered. "You never told me that you had been writing about me to your uncle. And what does he mean by calling me his niece?"
"I told him I hoped to marry you very shortly."