CHAPTER XII.
THE PROPOSAL.
“Miss Veille,” said the Judge at the breakfast table next morning, “the carriage will be round in just an hour, and as, if you are at all like Milly, you have a thousand and one traps to pick up, you’d better be about it.”
“Milly is going to help me. I never could do it alone,” returned Lilian, sipping her coffee very leisurely and lingering in the dining-room to talk with Lawrence, even after breakfast was over.
Mildred, however, had gone upstairs, and thither Judge Howell followed, finding her, as he expected, folding up Lilian’s clothes, and placing them in her trunk.
“That girl is too lazy to breathe,” he said. “Why don’t she come and help you, when I’ve a particular reason for wishing you to hurry,” and by way of accelerating matters, he crumpled in a heap two of Lilian’s muslin dresses, and ere Mildred could stop him, had jammed them into a band-box, containing the mite of a thing which Lilian called a bonnet.
A lace bertha next came under consideration, but Mildred snatched it from him just as he was tucking it away with a pair of India rubbers.
“You ruin the things!” she cried. “What’s the matter?”
“I’ll tell you, gipsy,” he answered, in a whisper, “I want to see you alone a few minutes before they go off. I tried last night till I sweat, but had to give it up.”
“We are alone now,” said Mildred, while the Judge replied: