"What on earth," I exclaimed, "have you been doing all this time?"
"Now go slow, Mamie, and don't look at me like that. I've been trying to make her acquainted with me—explaining the kind of fellow I am—getting solid with her. See?"
"Showing her the beauties of your character!" I exclaimed derisively.
"I said something about the defects, too," said Dicky modestly, "though not so much. And I was getting on beautifully, though it isn't so easy with an English girl. They don't seem to think it's proper to analyse your character. They're so maidenly."
"And so unenterprising," I said, but I said it to myself.
"Isabel was actually beginning to lead up to the subject," Dicky went on. "She asked me the other day if it was true that all American men were flirts. In another week I should have felt that she would know what was proposing to her."
"And you were going to wait another week?"
"Well, a man wants every advantage," said Dicky blandly.
"Did you explain to Isabel that you were only joining our party in the hope of meeting her accidentally soon again?"
"What else," asked he in pained surprise, "should I have joined it for? No, I didn't; I hadn't the chance, for one thing. You took the first train back to Rome next morning, you know. She wasn't up."