."

Doris was unpacking the tea-things energetically. "You never understand
anything without being told," she said. "Don't you know that I
positively hate the life I live now?"

"I can quite believe it," said Hugh Chesyl. "But, if you will allow me
to say so, I think your remedy would be worse than the disease. Your
utmost ingenuity will fail to persuade me that the life of a farmer's
wife would suit you."

"I should like the simplicity of it," she maintained.

"And getting up at five in the morning to make the butter? And having a
hulking brute of a husband--like Jeff Ironside--tramping into your
kitchen with his muddy boots and beastly clothes (which you would have
to mend) just when you had got things into good order? I can see you
doing it!" Hugh Chesyl's speech went into his easy, high-bred laugh.
"You of all people--the dainty and disdainful Miss Elliot, for whom no
man is good enough!"

"I don't know why you say that." There was quick protest in the girl's
voice. She clattered the cups and saucers as if something in the lazy
argument had exasperated her. "I like a man who is a man--the hard,
outdoor, wholesome kind--who isn't afraid of taking a little
trouble--who knows what he wants and how to get it. I shouldn't quarrel
with him on the score of muddy boots. I should be only glad that he had
enough of the real thing in him to go out in all weathers and not to
care."

"All of which is aimed at me," said Hugh to the trees above him. "I'm
afraid I'm boring you more than usual this afternoon."

"You can't help it," said Doris.

Hugh Chesyl's good-looking face crumpled a little, then smoothed itself
again to its usual placid expression. "Ah, well!" he said equably, "we
won't quarrel about it. Let's have some tea!"

He sat up in the punt and looked across at her; but she would not meet
his eyes, and there ensued a considerable pause before he said gently,
"I'm sorry you are not happy, you know."

"Are you?" she said.

"Yes. That's why I want you to marry me."

"Should I be any happier if I did?" said Doris, with a smile that was
somehow slightly piteous.

"I don't know." Hugh Chesyl's voice was as pleasantly vague as his
personality. "I shouldn't get in your way at all, and, at least, you
would have a home of your own."

"To be miserable in," said Doris, with suppressed vehemence.

"I don't know why you should be miserable," he said. "You wouldn't have
anything to do that you didn't like."

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