nd now
at arranging things, like you are yourself, and it will do me good to
be learning something from her."

Mrs. Makebelieve took a cloth in her hand and walked over to the
fireplace, which she commenced to polish.

The big man looked at Mary. It was incumbent on him to say something.
Twice he attempted to speak, and each time, on finding himself about
to say something regarding the weather, he stopped. Mary did not look
at him; her eyes were fixed stubbornly on a part of the wall well away
from his neighborhood, and it seemed to him that she had made a vow to
herself never to look at him again. But the utter silence of the room
was unbearable. He knew that he ought to get up and go out, but he
could not bring himself to do so. His self-love, his very physical
strength, rebelled against so tame a surrender. One thought he
gathered in from swaying vacuity--that the timid little creature whom
he had patronized would not find the harsh courage to refuse him
point-blank if he charged her straightly with the question, and so he
again assayed speech.

"Your mother is angry with us, Mary," said he, "and I suppose she has
good right to be angry; but the reason I did not speak to her before,
as I admit I should have if I had done the right thing, was that I had
very few chances of meeting her, and never did meet her without some
other person being there at the same time. I suppose the reason you
did not say anything was that you wanted to be quite sure of yourself
and of me too before you mentioned it. We have both done the wrong
thing in not being open, but maybe your mother will forgive us when
she knows we had no intention of hurting her, or of doing anything
behind her back. Your mother seems to hate me: I don't know why,
because she hardly knows me at all, and I've never done her any harm
or said a word against her. Perhaps when she knows me as well as you
do she'll change her mind: but you know I love you better than any one
else, and that I'd do anything I could to please you and be a good
husband to you. What I want to ask you before your mother is,--will
you marry me?"

Mary made no reply. She did not look or give the slightest sign that
she had heard. But now it was that she did not dare to look at him.
The spectacle of this big man badgered by her and by her mother,
pleading to her, and pleading, as he and she well knew, hopelessly,
would have broken her heart if she looked at him. She had to admire
the good