"But I prefer to pay you, Mr. Overtop. Why should you work for me for nothing, when I am not willing to do the same thing for Mrs. Gudgeon? 'The laborer is worthy of his hire,'" she added, laughing. "I set that adage in a copy book to-night."
"But I won't take anything," said Overtop, no longer nettled, but charmed to perceive this exhibition of sound good sense in a young lady.
"But I insist that you shall," continued Miss Pillbody, pleasantly. "Tell me, now, how much it is."
Overtop was standing within two feet of the schoolmistress, and her soft, dim eyes were beaming right into his. We leave psychologists to settle the phenomenon as they will; but the fact was, that each saw love in the eyes of the other. Overtop, in his bachelor musings, had thought over a hundred odd methods of putting the question. At this critical moment in the history of two hearts, a new form of the proposition occurred to him, so original and eccentric, that he determined to propound it at once.
He took Miss Pillbody's hand in his, before she knew it. She blushed, and would have withdrawn it; but he retained the hand with a gentle pressure.
"My dear Miss Pillbody," said Overtop, "I will take five dollars from you on one condition, and no other. Will you grant it?"
The schoolmistress, not knowing what she was saying, said "Yes."
"The condition is, that I shall buy an engagement ring, and put it on this dear hand."
Miss Pillbody blushed, and cast down her gentle eyes. The sagacious young lawyer, interpreting these signs as a full consent, stole his arm around her waist, and sealed the contract in a way all unknown to Chitty.