"No, not engaged to anything or anybody, but I've a notion I shall be, soon, if all goes well! I'm getting along in years now!"
"I might have known it!" sighed Nancy. "It was a prophetic instinct, my calling you the Yellow Peril."
"It isn't a bit nice of you to dislike me before you know me; I didn't do that way with you!"
"What do you mean?"
"Why, in the first letter you ever wrote father you sent your love to any of his children that should happen to be of the right size. I chanced to be just the right size, so I accepted it, gratefully; I've got it here with me to-night; no, I left it in my other coat," he said merrily, making a fictitious search through his pockets.
Nancy laughed at his nonsense; she could not help it.
"Will you promise to get over your foolish and wicked prejudices if I on my part promise never to take the Yellow House away from you unless you wish?" continued Tom.
"Willingly," exclaimed Nancy joyously. "That's the safest promise I could make, for I would never give up living in it unless I had to. First it was father's choice, then it was mother's, now all of us seem to have built ourselves into it, as it were. I am almost afraid to care so much about anything, and I shall be so relieved if you do not turn out to be really a Yellow Peril after all!"
"You are much more of a Yellow Peril yourself!" said Tom, "with that dress and that ribbon in your hair! Will you dance the next dance with me, please?"
"It's The Tempest; do you know it?"