‘Why, just as I was going to say, “Miss Lindon, may I offer you the gift of my affection—”’
‘Was that how you invariably intended to begin?’
‘Well, not always—one time like that, another time another way. Fact is, I got off a little speech by heart, but I never got a chance to reel it off, so I made up my mind to just say anything.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘Well, nothing,—you see, I never got there. Just as I was feeling my way, she’d ask me if I preferred big sleeves to little ones, or top hats to billycocks, or some nonsense of the kind.’
‘Would she now?’
‘Yes,—of course I had to answer, and by the time I’d answered the chance was lost.’ Percy was polishing his eyeglass. ‘I tried to get there so many times, and she choked me off so often, that I can’t help thinking that she suspected what it was that I was after.’
‘You think she did?’
‘She must have done. Once I followed her down Piccadilly, and chivied her into a glove shop in the Burlington Arcade. I meant to propose to her in there,—I hadn’t had a wink of sleep all night through dreaming of her, and I was just about desperate.’
‘And did you propose?’