"You choose an odd time for it—but wherefore?"
"I would teach you mine," she whispered.
"Yours—and for what purpose?"
"That—that——"
"Nay, I have courage enough to hear anything, dearest; for what purpose, mi querida?"
"That endearing term decides me—that we may be married, Quentin."
"I—senora!"
"You and I—what is there wonderful in that?"
Had a shell exploded between them, poor Quentin could not have been more nonplussed than by this proposition.
"Flirtation is a very fine thing," says his Peninsular comrade, Charles O'Malley, "but it's only a state of transition, after all; the tadpole existence of the lover would be very great fun, if one was never to become a frog under the hands of the parson."