forthcoming wedding, being a near friend and the host
of the bridegroom.

Uniformly kind to man and beast, he had made himself lazily pleasant to
the unattractive cousin. Circumstance had thrown them a good deal
together, and he had not quarrelled with circumstance. He had acquiesced
with a smile.

He made it appear in some fashion absurd that they should not at least
be friends, and then, having gained that much, he astounded her by
proposing to her. It was a preposterous situation. Having at length
freed herself from him, she escaped to the house to review it with
burning cheeks. It was nothing but a joke, of course--of course, however
he might repudiate the fact, and she resented it with all her might. She
would teach him that such jokes were not to be played upon her with
impunity. She had no one to defend her from this species of insult. She
would defend herself. She would fool him as he sought to fool her.

But there was a yet more painful ordeal in store for her that night in
the billiard-room, had she but known it. The morrow's bridegroom, Fred
Danvers, having failed to execute an easy shot, some one accused him of
possessing shaky nerves.

"You'll never get through to-morrow if you can't do an easy thing like
that," was the laughing remark.

Tots looked up.

"Oh, rot! The bridegroom has no business to suffer with the jumps.
That's the best man's privilege. He does all the work, and has all the
responsibility. Why, I'm shakin' in my shoes whenever I think of
to-morrow, but if it were my own weddin' I shouldn't turn a hair."

Young Danvers guffawed at this.

"Bet you'll turn the colour of this table when the time comes, if it
ever does come, which I doubt!"

"Why?" questioned Tots.

Danvers laughed again, enjoying the joke. Tots was always more or less
of a butt to his friends.

"In the first place, you'd never have the courage or the energy to
propose. In the second, no girl would ever take you seriously. In the
third--"

He broke off, struck silent by a wholly unexpected display of energy on
the part of Tots, who had suddenly hurled a piece of chalk at him from
the other end of the room. It hit him smartly on the shoulder, leaving a
white patch to testify to the excellence of Tots's aim.

"I beg your pardon," said Tots mildly. "But you really shouldn't talk
such rot, particularly in the presence of my _fiancee_."

He turned round to Ruth, who was shrinking into a corner behind him, and
with a