“What is the good?” she began.
“Would you marry on three hundred a year?”
She looked at me for a moment. “That’s six pounds a week,” she said. “One could manage on that, easily. Smithie’s brother—No, he only gets two hundred and fifty. He married a typewriting girl.”
“Will you marry me if I get three hundred a year?”
She looked at me again, with a curious gleam of hope.
“If!” she said.
I held out my hand and looked her in the eyes. “It’s a bargain,” I said.
She hesitated and touched my hand for an instant. “It’s silly,” she remarked as she did so. “It means really we’re—” She paused.
“Yes?” said I.
“Engaged. You’ll have to wait years. What good can it do you?”