t awhile," said the young American slowly. "There does appear to me
to be an alternative. Now, see here----"

He leant towards Miss Million. He held out his hand, as if to point out
the alternative. He said: "There is another way of fixing it, I guess.
We needn't fight. I'd feel real mean, fighting a dear little girl like
you----"

"You won't get round me," said Miss Million, quite as defensively as if
she were addressing a tradesman's boy on a doorstep. "No getting round
me with soft soap, young man!"

"I wasn't meaning it that way," he said, "The way I meant would let us
share the money and yet let's both have the dollars and the glory of the
invention and everything else!"

"I don't know how you mean," declared Miss Million.

I, sitting there in my corner, had seen what was coming.

But I really believe Miss Million herself received the surprise of her
life when her cousin gave his quiet reply.

"Supposing," he said, "supposing we two were to get married?"

"Marry?" cried Miss Million in her shrillest Putney-kitchen voice. "Me?
You?"

She flung up her little, dark head and let loose a shriek of
laughter--half-indignant laughter at that.

Then, recovering herself, she turned upon the young man who had proposed
to her in this quite unconventional fashion and began to--well! there's
no expression for it but one of her own. She began to "go for him."

"I don't call it very funny," she declared sharply, "to go making a joke
of a subject like that to a young lady you haven't known above a half an
hour hardly."

"I wasn't thinking about the humourousness of the proposition, Cousin
Nellie!" protested Mr. Hiram P. Jessop steadily. "I meant it perfectly
seriously."

Miss Million gazed at him from the chair opposite.

Her cousin met that challenging, distrustful gaze unflinchingly. And in
his own grey eyes I noticed a mixture of obstinacy and of quite
respectful admiration. Certainly the little thing was looking very
pretty and spirited.

Every woman has her "day." It's too bad that this generally happens at a
time when nobody calls and there's not a soul about to admire her at her
best. The next evening, when she's got to wear a low-cut frock and go
out somewhere, the chances are a hundred to one that it will be her "day
off," and that she will appear a perfect fright, all "salt-cellars" and
rebellious wisps of hair.

But to proceed with Miss Million, who was walking off with one man's
admiration by means