"Read page four," he commanded.
It was impossible to avoid smiling, and this sent Millwood raging up and down the small room. The Quartermaster-Sergeant wrote that he wished to marry me so soon as the war was over, or, if I preferred it, at an earlier date; he begged that an answer should be despatched at once—"that the subject can be off my mind."
"Look here, Mary Weston," said Millwood, shaking a fore-finger at me, in his platform way. "You've got a mad, wild, reckless, tempestuous nature—"
"Don't be ridiculous. I'm one of the most self-possessed—"
"Where love is concerned," he insisted, "all women are alike. I know 'em well. I've studied 'em. And I ask you to put this soldier chap off. Postpone him, so to speak. Let your decision be definitely deferred. Treat his offer in a lady-like manner, but allow him to see that you are in no way eager to march immediately into the madness of matrimony."
"What I can't understand is why you are in such a state of alarm and excitement. What on earth has it to do with you?"
"Everything!" he declared. "My future is at stake. My happiness is in peril. My career——" He glanced at the clock. "Hang it," he cried, "I shall be late for my meeting if I don't fly."
I brushed his hat, and gave it to him. Reminded him of his pipe. Hurried after him with his walking stick.
"Daresay I seem somewhat peculiar in my style," he remarked, more composedly. "But the fact of it is, Mary Weston, I came home here with the full and definite intention of proposing to you, myself!"