reen, moss-velvet cushion.

"This is what I've been longing for all day," said he.

I hadn't; and I was thinking about the cadets. But I agreed that it was
beautiful.

"Yes, it is," he answered, looking at me. "I never saw anything so
pretty. Say, Lady Betty, you're an awful flirt."

I did open my eyes at that. "A flirt!" I exclaimed. "I never had a
chance to try being it."

"I guess you don't need to try. There's some things girls like you are
born knowing. I've been miserable all the afternoon. Couldn't you see
my agony?"

"I didn't notice," said I.

"Ah, that's the trouble. You weren't thinking of me. Of course, I
oughtn't to have cared for those little boys," (some of them were
inches taller than he) "but I couldn't help it. I kept saying inside,
'This is a foretaste of what I've got to suffer when she's staying with
Katherine at The Moorings.' I don't know when I've been so unpopular
with myself. I don't see how I'm going to get along unless you'll be
nice to me; right now."

"I am nice to you," I said. "As nice as I know how to be."

"I could teach you to be a lot nicer. Say, Lady Betty, let me, won't
you?"

His eyes, though they are such a pale blue, had that silly, melting
look in them that my cousin Loveland's have when he talks to me. "Let
you do what?" I asked, almost snappishly, for a person sitting in such
a lovely place.

"Teach you to like me. I fell all over myself in love with you the
first minute I saw you."

"Day before yesterday!" I exclaimed. "What nonsense. You're poking fun
at me. I don't believe in love at first sight--at least, I don't think
I do. Anyhow, nobody could fall in love with _me_ in that way."

"Couldn't they, though? That's all you know about it, then. All
Americans will fall in love with you like that, and it's just what I
want to guard against. I want you to be engaged to me before you go to
Newport. Then I shall feel kind of safe."

"Dear me, are you really proposing, and it isn't in joke?" I asked. "I
do wish you wouldn't."

"Would I propose to Lady Betty Bulkeley in joke?" he reproached me.

"The idea of proposing to any girl when you've only seen her three
times!"

"What did I tell you about my friend in San Francisco? I was working
slowly up to this, even then."

"_Slowly!_"

"Yes, very slowly. I think I've shown a great deal of patience.
American girls--the beauties, I mean--are quite hurt if a fellow
doesn't propose somewhere along in the first day