"No; what you say to me and what I say to you hasn't any more to do with you and Lucy than if you were selling me a bill of goods. I like you, Jimmy, and I've watched your career so far with interest, and I look for great things from you in the future, and that's why I say to you to go ahead and get Lucy, and good luck to you both."
Mr. Putnam took up some papers from his desk and pretended to be studying them, but from the tail of his eye he gathered the gloom that was settling over Jimmy's face. The elder man enjoyed the situation.
"Well, Mr. Putnam," Jimmy asked, "why can't you just tell Lucy for me that I have asked you, and that you say it's all right? Then when I go to see her next time, it'll all be arranged and understood."
"Le' me see. Didn't I read a poem or something at school about some one who hadn't sand enough to propose to a girl and who got another man to ask her? But it wasn't her own father. Why, Jimmy, if you haven't courage enough to propose to a girl, what do you suppose will be your finish if she marries you? A married man has to have spunk."
"I've got the spunk all right, but you understand how I feel."
"Sure! Let me give you some advice. When you propose to a girl, you don't have to come right out and ask her to marry you."
Jimmy caught at the straw.
"You don't?" he asked.
"Certainly not. There's half a dozen ways of letting her know that you want her. Usually—always, I may say—she knows it anyway, and unless she wants you she'll not let you tell her so. But if I wanted a short, sharp 'No' from a girl, I'd get her father to ask her to marry me."
"Then you mean that I've got to ask her myself?"