get chasing glory, and
you don't care a darn, anyway, if they did. Say, when you get clean
crazy about anybody, same as I am about you, you find yourself hating
everybody that comes near them. You get notions that every man is
conspiring to tell the girl what a perfect fool you are, that they're
worrying to boost you right out with her. You hate her, because you
think she thinks you are a simpleton, and can't see your good points,
which are so obvious to yourself. You hate yourself, you hate life,
you hate the sunlight and the trees, and your food, and--and
everything. And you wouldn't have things different, or stop making
such a fool of yourself, no--not if hell froze over. Will--will you
marry me?"

Helen's humor suddenly burst the bonds of all restraint. She sat there
laughing until she nearly choked.

Bill waited with a patience that seemed inexhaustible. Then, as the
girl's mirth began to lessen, he put his question again with dogged
persistence.

"Will you marry me?"

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Of all the----"

"Will you marry me?" the man persisted, his great face flushing.

Helen abruptly sobered. The masterful tone somehow sent a delighted
thrill through her nerves.

She nodded.

"Of course I will. I--intended to from the first moment I saw your
big, funny face with Stanley----"

"You mean that, Hel? You really--meant to marry me? You did?"

The man's happy excitement was something not easily to be forgotten.
He sprang from his chair, reached out his powerful hands, caught the
girl about the waist, and picked her up in his arms as he might have
picked up a child. His great bear-like hug was a monstrous thing to
endure, but Helen was more than willing to endure it, as also his
kisses, which he rained upon her happy, laughing face.

But the girl's sense of the fitness of things soon came to her rescue.
The ridiculousness, the undignified figure she must appear, held in
her great lover's arms, set her struggling to free herself, and, in a
few moments, he set her once more upon her feet, and stood laughing
down into her blushing face.

"Say," he cried, with a great laugh, "I don't care a cuss if my brains
never hatch out. You're going to be my wife. You, the girl I'm crazy
to death about. Fyles and all the rest can go hang. Gee!"

Helen looked up at him. Then she smoothed out her ruffled frock, and
patted her hair into its place.

"Well," she cried, with a happy laugh, "I've heard some queer
proposal