"Did I shrug?"
"You certainly did."
"Well," candidly, "it was the thought of money that made me do it."
"I detest it, too."
"Good heavens, I didn't say I detested it! What I shrugged about was my own dreary lack of it."
"Bachelors do not require much."
"That's true; but I no longer desire to remain a bachelor." The very thing that saved him was the added laughter, forced, miserably forced. Fool! The words had slipped without his thinking.
"Gracious! That sounds horribly like a proposal." She beamed upon him merrily.
And his heart sank, for he had been earnest enough, for all his blunder. Manlike, he did not grasp the fact that under the circumstance merriment was all she could offer him, if she would save him from his own stupidity.
"But I do hate money," she reaffirmed.