“Marry me?” Rodney gazed at him, shocked. “Have I asked her to marry me? I, who am not worthy to polish the blade of her niblick! I, who have not even a thirty handicap, ask a girl to marry me who was in the semi-final of last year’s Ladies’ Open! No, no, Bates, I may be a vers-libre poet, but I have some sense of what is fitting. I love her, yes. I love her with a fervour which causes me to frequently and for hours at a time lie tossing sleeplessly upon my pillow. But I would not dare to ask her to marry me.”
Anastatia burst into a peal of girlish laughter.
“You poor chump!” she cried. “Is that what has been the matter all this time! I couldn’t make out what the trouble was. Why, I’m crazy about you. I’ll marry you any time you give the word.”
Rodney reeled.
“What!”
“Of course I will.”
“Anastatia!”
“Rodney!”
He folded her in his arms.
“Well, I’m dashed,” said William. “It looks to me as if I had been making rather a lot of silly fuss about nothing. Jane, I wronged you.”