"'You needn't be frightened; for it's me that ought to be afraid.'
"'And what have you to be afraid of, you great big man?' she said, stopping in wonder.
"'I'm afraid of your big black eyes, Fanny Montrose, 'I said, 'and I'm afraid of your slip of a body that I could snap in my hands,' I said; 'for I'm going to fall in love with you, Fanny Montrose.'
"Which was a lie, for I was already. With that I ran off like a fool. I ran off, but from that night I walked home with Fanny Montrose.
"For a month we kept company, and Bill Coogan and Dan Farrar and the rest of them took my notice and kept off. The women laughed at me and sneered at her; but I minded them not, for I knew the ways of the factory, and besides there wasn't a man's voice in the lot—that I heard.
"But one night as we were wandering back to Keene's boarding-house, Fanny Montrose on my arm, Bill Coogan planted himself before us, and called her something to her face that there was no getting around.
"I took her on a bit, weeping and shaking, and I said to her: 'Stand here.'
"And I went back, and caught Bill Coogan by the throat and the belt, and swung him around my head, and flung him against the lamp-post. And the post broke off with a crash, and Coogan lay quiet, with nothing more to say.
"I went back to Fanny Montrose, who had stopped her crying, and said, shaking with anger at the dirty insult: 'Fanny Montrose, will you be my wife? Will you marry me this night?'
"She pushed me away from her, and looked up into my face in a frightened way and said: 'Do you mean to be your wife?'