u, and I was never more in
earnest in my life. There's nothing wrong in my intentions or anything
like that. What I mean is strictly honorable--"

But the expression of her face made him stop. She was angry, and she
was laughing at the same time.

"The last thing you should have said," she cried. "It's like a--a
matrimonial bureau: intentions strictly honorable; object, matrimony.
But it's no more than I deserved. This is what I suppose you call
urging like Sam Scratch."

The tan had bleached out of Daylight's skin since the time he came to
live under city roofs, so that the flush of blood showed readily as it
crept up his neck past the collar and overspread his face. Nor in his
exceeding discomfort did he dream that she was looking upon him at that
moment with more kindness than at any time that day. It was not in her
experience to behold big grown-up men who blushed like boys, and
already she repented the sharpness into which she had been surprised.

"Now, look here, Miss Mason," he began, slowly and stumblingly at
first, but accelerating into a rapidity of utterance that was almost
incoherent; "I'm a rough sort of a man, I know that, and I know I don't
know much of anything. I've never had any training in nice things.
I've never made love before, and I've never been in love before
either--and I don't know how to go about it any more than a thundering
idiot. What you want to do is get behind my tomfool words and get a
feel of the man that's behind them. That's me, and I mean all right, if
I don't know how to go about it."

Dede Mason had quick, birdlike ways, almost flitting from mood to mood;
and she was all contrition on the instant.

"Forgive me for laughing," she said across the gate. "It wasn't really
laughter. I was surprised off my guard, and hurt, too. You see, Mr.
Harnish, I've not been..."

She paused, in sudden fear of completing the thought into which her
birdlike precipitancy had betrayed her.

"What you mean is that you've not been used to such sort of proposing,"
Daylight said; "a sort of on-the-run, 'Howdy,
glad-to-make-your-acquaintance, won't-you-be-mine' proposition."

She nodded and broke into laughter, in which he joined, and which
served to pass the awkwardness away. He gathered heart at this, and
went on in greater confidence, with cooler head and tongue.

"There, you see, you prove my case. You've had experience in such
matters. I don't doubt you've had slathers of pro