uld give
neither reason nor name! But how satisfying it all was--whatever it was
that amused her in this man's uncertainty, and in the faint traces of an
irritation as unreasoning as the source of it!

"Really, Captain Selwyn," she said, "you are not one of those
old-fashioned literary landmarks who objects through several chapters to
a girl's marrying--are you?"

"Yes," he said, "I am."

"You are quite serious?"

"Quite."

"You won't _let_ me?"

"No, I won't."

"Why?"

"I want you myself," he said, smiling at last.

"That is flattering but horridly selfish. In other words you won't marry
me and you won't let anybody else do it."

"That is the situation," he admitted, freeing his line and trying to
catch the crinkled silvery snell of the new leader. It persistently
avoided him; he lowered the rod toward Miss Erroll; she gingerly
imprisoned the feathered fly between pink-tipped thumb and forefinger
and looked questioningly at him.

"Am I to sit here holding this?" she inquired.

"Only a moment; I'll have to soak that leader. Is the water visible
under that log you're sitting on?"

She nodded.

So he made his way through the brush toward her, mounted the log, and,
seating himself beside her, legs dangling, thrust the rod tip and leader
straight down into the stream below.

Glancing around at her he caught her eyes, bright with mischief.

"You're capable of anything to-day," he said. "Were you considering the
advisability of starting me overboard?" And he nodded toward the water
beneath their feet.

"But you say that you won't let me throw you overboard, Captain Selwyn!"

"I mean it, too," he returned.

"And I'm not to marry that nice young man?"--mockingly sweet. "No?
What!--not anybody at all--ever and ever?"

"Me," he suggested, "if you're as thoroughly demoralised as that."

"Oh! Must a girl be pretty thoroughly demoralised to marry you?"

"I don't suppose she'd do it if she wasn't," he admitted, laughing.

She considered him, head on one side:

"You are ornamental, anyway," she concluded.

"Well, then," he said, lifting the leader from the water to inspect it,
"will you have me?"

"Oh, but is there nothing to recommend you except your fatal beauty?"

"My moustache," he ventured; "it's considered very useful when I'm
mentally perplexed."

"It's clipped too close; I have told you again and again that I don't
care for it clipped like that. Your mind would be a perfect blank if you
c