"Although so bright and amusing she is never silly," I heard Mr. Macdonald's long, slow voice saying. "She is a very lovely, fascinating little woman." So I took a seat on the woodpile.
"You'd better fall in love with her," Julius said, cutting the briers off of a long switch he held in his hand, and talking careless like, as if he wasn't paying much attention.
"Your advice comes too late," Mr. Macdonald said, his voice so solemn that Julius looked up in surprise.
"What!" Julius remarked.
"Yes," Mr. Macdonald said, sounding very devoted, "I did that very thing the first moment I looked at her dear, sweet face."
Julius stared at him a minute, then laughed a tickled laugh; and I moved my seat right up to the hedge so I could get a good look at them—it was the next best thing to a proposal.
"That's the funniest thing I ever heard of," Julius said after he had quit laughing.
"It's devilish funny to you," poor Mr. Macdonald said, looking like he didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. "But—what am I to do?"
"Do?" said Julius very businesslike, like folks talk when they're telling you to follow their example. "What do men in your situation usually do? Why, propose to her!"
"But she'd never marry me," he said looking right pitiful, for he spoke as humble as if he wasn't any taller than me, and him over six feet tall. "It would be the most absurd thing in the world for a man like me to propose to a woman like her!"