“Then what _does_ he do?” demanded Jack. “I should jolly well like to know!”
“What does he do?” she repeated, musingly. Then she suddenly laughed joyously: “Oh, Jack!--I don’t believe I know! He reads the papers and smokes--and writes a little--then he wants to go for a walk and asks me to go with him--and we talk-and--and that’s all!”
“That’s all!” and Jack looked whole volumes of incredulity. “And just to read the papers and smoke and take walks with you he comes down here miles away from London to stay with you and your father whole weeks together! A regular sponge _I_ call him! Yes!--a sponge!”
“I daresay! Your Dad likes any one who’ll talk history and politics to him by the hour. But _you_!--_you_ don’t want history and politics!”
“Don’t I?”--and her eyes sparkled prettily. Then I’m like the poet Keats--
‘Hence, pageant History! hence, gilded cheat; Swart planet in the universe of deeds!’”
“Ah, that’s poetry,” said Jack. “I don’t care very much about it!”
“Nor does _he_!” she replied. “I quoted those lines to him the other day and he said Keats was honey and water.”
“Never mind what ‘he’ said,” and Jack’s voice took on a raspy tone. “I daresay you’ll think me an impertinent sort of chap but--but you know I’m very fond of you--”
She stretched out a little white hand towards him, and he took it tenderly in his own large strong palm.
“Yes, I _do_ know!” she said, sweetly. “And--and it’s kind of you--”
“Kind!” echoed Jack. “Kind! There’s nothing kind about it! Nobody could help being fond of you--but I--I’m just a rough chap--and I’ve no settled position yet and no money--and it wouldn’t be fair to ask you to marry me”--here his clasp tightened involuntarily on the soft fingers he held--“but I want you to, all the same!”
“Do you? Really?” she queried, with a bewitching uplift of her pretty eyebrows. “Oh, Jack! Marriage is such a dreadful business! Just think of the married people _we_ know! Take the Simmonses--”
Jack whistled,--a dismal, dubious whistle.
“What of them?” he said. “_You_ could never be like Mrs. Simmons--and I’m sure I shall never be like Mr.!”
“And the Blakes, and the Foxes, and the Meedons,” she went on, enumerating the different names on her little white fingers. “They’re all married people, and they just bore one another to death! Now you and I--we’re not married--we’re not even engaged--we’re just the best friends in the world, and we _don’t_ bore each other to death!”