han you do. Besides auction and the
piano--which I play very badly--and clothes and how to get hold of
tickets for successful plays, I don't know one single thing."

"Will you marry me, tomorrow?"

"Well, uh----"

"Think of Mrs. Gilson's face when she learns it! And Saxton, and that
Mrs. Betz!"

It was to no spoken sentence but to her kiss that she added, "Providing
we ever get the car out of this river, that is!"

"Oh, my dear, my dear, and all the romantic ways I was going to propose!
I had the best line about roses and stars and angels and everything----"

"They always use those, but nobody ever proposed to me in a bug in a
flood before! Oh! Milt! Life is fun! I never knew it till you kidnapped
me. If you kiss me again like that, we'll both topple overboard. By the
way, _can_ we get the car out?"

"I think so, if we put on the chains. We'll have to take off our shoes
and stockings."

Shyly, turning from him a little, she stripped off her stockings and
pumps, while he changed from a flivver-driver into a young viking, with
bare white neck, pale hair ruffled about his head, trousers rolled up
above his straight knees--a young seaman of the crew of Eric the Red.

They swung out on the running-board, now awash. With slight squeals they
dropped into the cold stream. Dripping, laughing, his clothes clinging
to him, he ducked down behind the car to get the jack under the back
axle, and with the water gurgling about her and splashing its
exhilarating coldness into her face, she stooped beside him to yank the
stiff new chains over the rear wheels.

They climbed back into the car, joyously raffish as a pair of gipsies.
She wiped a dab of mud from her cheek, and remarked with an earnestness
and a naturalness which that Jeff Saxton who knew her so well would
never have recognized as hers:

"Gee, I hope the old bird crawls out now."

Milt let in the reverse, raced the engine, started backward with a burst
of muddy water churned up by the whirling wheels. They struck the bank,
sickeningly hung there for two seconds, began to crawl up, up, with a
feeling that at any second they would drop back again.

Then, instantly, they were out on the shore and it was absurd to think
that they had ever been boating down there in the stream. They washed
each other's muddy faces, and laughed a great deal, and rubbed their
legs with their stockings, and resumed something of a dull and civilized
aspect and, singing sentimental balla