am I asking too much? Are you sure you won't
regret anything you may have to give up?"

"There's nothing I wouldn't give up to be with you always," I assured
him. "But I don't see that I shall have to give up much that I really
care for. We shall be poor, of course, but I shan't mind that a
bit--with you. We can live in a sweet little cottage somewhere, can't
we? Or if you have to be in a town, we shall have a wee, wee flat, and
it will be such fun looking after it, just like having a doll's house,
only a hundred times better. I've never been rich, you know; it's
always been rather a struggle, and ever so many of my dresses have been
made out of Mother's or Victoria's. I shall learn to cook and sew."

"If I were so poor as all that, darling, I shouldn't be asking you to
marry me," said Jim. "I'm better off than you think, for as I told you,
I've been doing fairly well lately, and I guess if one of us two ever
has to cook it will be I. We might have to do that sometimes, but it
will only be if we're camping somewhere."

"I do hope so. It would be glorious!" I exclaimed.

"We can have the cottage or the flat all right, or maybe even both if
things go on as well as they're going now," he said, "and there's
nothing on God's earth I won't do to make you happy. Heavens! I should
think so, after what you're doing for me--trusting me, without knowing
any more of me than you've seen in these few weeks----"

"I'd have trusted you to the world's end, after the day you jumped
overboard and saved the little boy. Besides, you were _you_; and I'd
have trusted you just the same if you hadn't."

"Bless you, my angel. But think of the marriages you might have made."

"I couldn't have made more than one, at least I hope not," said I,
flippantly. "I could _never_ have married anyone but you, so I should
have had to be an old maid if you hadn't asked me, and think how awful
that would have been. You _don't_ regret asking me, do you?"

"Regret? Well--it doesn't bear talking of. I suppose I ought to be able
to say that I'd meant to keep my love to myself, and it only sprang out
on an ungovernable impulse. But it wouldn't be true if I did. I always
meant to ask you, from the very first--though I had little enough hope,
even up to to-day, that it would be anything more than friendship on
your part. But oh, how hard I did mean to try for you. My one virtue
was to wait until you had seen enough of other men--men of a different
sort--for y