“Do you mean me?” she cried at last—“me?” with mingled horror and surprise. “I don’t know what you mean!” she said.
“Yes, my dear, I mean you. I tell you I looked again at all the rest, and there was not one so nice. Of course I mean you, Dolly. I have always been fond of you from the first. I will make you a good husband, dear, and you will make me a sweet little wife.”
“Oh, no, no, no!” Dolly cried. The world, and the sky, and the trees, seemed to be going round with her. She caught at the gate to support herself. “No, no, no! It is all a dreadful mistake.”
“It cannot be a mistake. I know very well what I am doing, Dolly.”
“But oh dear! oh dear! Sir Augustus, let me speak. Do you think I know what I am doing? No, no, no, no! You must be going out of your senses to ask me.”
“Why? because you are so young and so little? But that is just what I like. You are the prettiest of all the girls. You are a dear, sweet, good little thing that will never disappoint me. No, no, it is no mistake.”
To see him standing there beaming and smiling through the dusk was a terrible business for Dolly.
“It is a mistake. I cannot, cannot do it—indeed I cannot. I will not marry you—never! I don’t want to marry anybody,” she said, beginning to weep in her excitement.
Now and then a villager would lumber by, and, seeing the couple at the porch, grin to himself and think that Miss Dolly was just the same as the other lasses. It was a pity the gentleman was so little, was all they said.