“Oh, Grace!” I cried, “how obtuse you are!”
“That’s it, call me names,” said she.
Here a dreadfully painful silence came. It was only disturbed by the aggressive behaviour of my heart and the scratching of Miss Grace’s pencil. Never in my life had I felt such an unmitigated ruffian, and certainly never a more uncompromising idiot. Doesn’t it seem absurd, considering the amount of totally unnecessary things one learns at school—Latin, Greek, and so forth—that the gentlemen of England are utterly untrained in one of the most complex and delicate sciences that ever has to be practised by the human male? Oh, for a few of the most rudimentary hints as to how to conduct a proposal! Lord! what is a fellow to do when the object of his passion is busily occupied with the preparation of cricket averages, and not paying the least attention to his distraught manner, or the gentle hints conveyed in his conversation?
There was the wretched Grace, apparently overjoyed at this lull in the proceedings, jotting down figures with a haste that can only be described as feverish, tossing telegrams about and looking really dangerous to talk to. Very encouraging state of affairs, considering that the sum total of my eloquence was spent already. But the Briton in me, after a two minutes’ interval, set doggedly to work once more.
“Grace,” I re-opened, “I’m not a county man an’ all that, you know. I’m not a Stoddy or a Ranjy, you know. Not a W. G., you know. I’m not a Toddles or an Archie, you know. You know that, Grace, don’t you?”
“Oh, rats!” said Grace, figuring away more feverishly than ever.
“Ah, but it’s not rats,” said I. “It’s not rats at all. It’s far too serious for rats, I can assure you, Grace. It’s something very serious, Grace.”
“That’s all right,” said Grace, with supreme indifference; and then, biting her pencil and puckering up her brow, she said: “How many times does fourteen go into ninety-seven? Quick!”
“I’m not a ready-reckoner,” said I indignantly.
“You are a jolly rotter, Dimmy, that’s what you are,” said Grace urbanely.