"What does this mean?" exclaimed Professor Anstice, anxiously fumbling about Winifred's wrist in the vain effort to find her pulse. "Are you ill? You have not had a hemorrhage or anything, have you?"
"Don't worry about me, dear! I shall live to plague you for many a year yet. I'm as well as can be, except for the mind ache." Here she gave a nervous little laugh. The Professor looked down at her, sitting there on the stool, her head drooping to the side as he remembered to have seen it years ago when she was a little chidden child. The waving hair hid her face from his sight,—all but the delicate oval of the cheek and the curve of the full, rounded chin.
"Winifred," he said gently, "I think you have something to tell me."
"Yes, I have, only I don't know how to begin."
"Is it, perhaps, about Mr. Flint?"
"Yes, about Mr. Flint," Winifred admitted.
"He has been asking you to marry him?"
"Yes, asking me to marry him," Winifred repeated, still like a child reciting her catechism.
"And you promised."