"I wonder how soon my maid will come," she mused, dropping the loose
roses on her knees. "If she is going to be very long about it perhaps--
perhaps you might care to find a chair--if you have decided to wait."

He drew one from a corner and seated himself, pulses hammering his
throat.

Through the stillness of the house sounded at intervals the clink of
glass from the pantry. Other sounds from above indicated the plumber's
progress from floor to floor.

"Do you realize," she said impulsively, "how _very_ nice you have been to
me? What a perfectly horrid position I might have been in, with poor
Clarence on the back fence! And suppose I had dared follow him alone to
the cellar? I--I might have been there yet--up to my neck in coal?"

She gazed into space with considerable emotion.

"And now," she said, "I am safe here in my own home. I have lunched
divinely, a maid is on the way to me, Clarence remains somewhere safe
indoors, Mr. Quinn is flitting from faucet to faucet, the electric light
and the telephone will be in working order before very long--and it is
_all_ due to you!"

"I--I did a few things I almost w-wish I hadn't," stammered Brown,
"b-because I can't, somehow, decently t-tell you how tremendously
I--I--" He stuck fast.

"What?"

"It would look as though I were presuming on a t-trifling service
rendered, and--oh, I can't say it; I want to, but I can't."

"Say what? Please, I don't mind what you are--are going to say."

"It's--it's that I----"

"Y-es?" in soft encouragement.

"W-want to know you most tremendously now. I don't want to wait several
years for chance and hazard."

"O-h!" as though the information conveyed a gentle shock to her. Her low-
breathed exclamation nearly finished Brown.

"I knew you'd think it unpardonable for me--at such a time--to venture
to--to--ask--say--express--convey----"

"Why do you--how can I--where could we--" She recovered herself
resolutely. "I do not think we ought to take advantage of an accident
like this.... Do you? Besides, probably, in the natural course of social
events----"

"But it may be years! months! weeks!" insisted Brown, losing control of
himself.

"I should hope it would at least be a decently reasonable interval of
several weeks----"

"But I don't know what to do if I never see you again for weeks! I c-care
so much--for--you."

She shrank back in her chair, and in her altered face he read that he had
disgraced himself.

"I knew