repeated "Stuffenhammer, Stuffenhammer," in tones
that Henry Irving might have envied, while I gently undid the noose
around his neck. I led him under a tree and told him to buck up. He did
so--slowly and surely--and then began to ask me agitated questions about
proposing. He deferred to me as though I had spent my whole life
Bluebearding through the social system. He wanted to be coached how to
do it, you know. I told him to rip out the words--any old words--and
then kiss her.

"Don't let there be any embarrassing pause," I said. "A girl hates
pauses."

"It seems a great liberty," he returned. "It doesn't strike me as
r-r-respectful."

"You try it," I said. "It's the only way."

"I'll be glad when it's over," he remarked dreamily.

"Whatever you do, keep clear of set speeches," I went on. "Blurt it out,
no matter how badly--but with all the fire and ginger in you."

He gazed at me like a dead calf.

"Here goes," he said, and started on a trembling walk toward the house.

I don't know whether he was afraid, or didn't get the chance, or what
it was; but at any rate the afternoon wore on without the least sign
of his coming to time. I kept tab on him as well as I could--checkers
with Miss Drayton--half an hour writing letters--a long talk with the
major--and finally his getting lost altogether in the shrubbery with
an old lady. Freddy said the suspense was killing her, and was terribly
despondent and miserable. I couldn't interest her in the Seventy-second
Street house at all. She asked what was the good of working and
worrying, and figuring and making lists--when in all probability it
would be another girl that would live there. She had an awfully mean
opinion of my constancy, and was intolerably philosophical and
Oh-I-wouldn't-blame-you-the-least-little-bit-if-you-did-go-off-and-marry-somebody-else!
She took a pathetic pleasure in loving me, losing me, and then weeping
over the dear dead memory. She said nobody ever got what they wanted,
anyway; and might she come, when she was old and ugly and faded and
weary, to take care of my children and be a sort of dear old aunty in
the Seventy-second Street house. I said certainly not, and we had a
fight right away.

As we were dressing for dinner that night I took Jones to task, and
tried to stiffen him up. I guess I must have mismanaged it somehow, for
he said he'd thank me to keep my paws out of his affairs, and then went
into the bath-room, where he shaved and gr