"Well, Mr Hancock proposed to me—but you won't tell, will you?"
Mr Bevan gasped.
"Hancock!"
"Yes; he wrote such a funny, queer little letter. It made me cry."
"Hancock!"
"Yes, but you've promised never to tell. Every one seems to have been proposing to me in the last three months, and I wish they'd stop—I wish they'd stop," said Miss Lambert, half-talking to herself and half to Bevan, half-laughing and half-crying all at the same time; "it's got on my nerves. James will be the next—it's like the influenza, it seems in the air——"
"I came to-day," said Mr Bevan with awful and preternatural gravity, "to speak to you, Fanny—to tell you that ever since I saw you first, I have thought of nobody else——"
"Oh, stop," said Fanny, "stop, stop—oh, this is too bad! I never thought you would do it. I thought I had one f-f-friend."
"Don't cry; Fanny, listen to me."
"I can't help it, it's too awful."