They took it in good part, and Silverthorn answered:
“That’s not surprising. I don’t know, myself.”
“I’m trying,” said Vibbard, bluntly, “to make Thorny fall in love with her. But I can’t seem to succeed.”
“No,” said his friend, “because I insist upon it that she’s just the woman for you.”
Vibbard turned to me with an expression of ridicule.
“Yes,” he said, “Thorny is as much wrapped up in that idea as if his own happiness depended on my marrying her.”
“You’re rivals then, after a new fashion,” was my comment. “Don’t you see, though, how you are to settle it?”
“No.”
“Why, each of you should propose in form, for the other. Then Miss Winwood would have to take the difficulty into her own hands.”