e her
understand all without a word being spoken.

Now he cleared his throat, took a reasonable air, a tone almost of
banter, to say what, influenced by the long precedent of their converse
together, he could say only in that manner, covering up as best he could
the fact that his heart trembled and burned.

"Shall we resume our conversation of last Friday?" he asked, with a fine
imitation of the comradely ease which had marked all their intercourse
that day.

He was looking over the valley, as if still preoccupied with its beauty
rather than with her.

Thus misled, she did not guess right. She said:

"About Charlie, you mean? Just fancy, I haven't thought of him once all
day! Little varmint! Don't I wish I had the spanking of him! But I guess
it would lame my arm."

"Not about Charlie. I asked would you marry me, and you said you would
not. Will you to-day?"

"Not for a farm!" she answered, with emphasis equal to her
precipitation.

"Why not?" he asked, undisconcerted.

"Because."

"Come, let us reason together, Aurora." He changed position, arranging
himself on his elbow so as to be able to look at her. His eyes were
steady. "For a man to ask a woman to marry him is of course the greatest
piece of impertinence of which he could be guilty. But from such
impertinences, Auroretta, has been derived every beautiful thing that
has blessed our poor world from the beginning. No man is good enough for
any woman, let that stand for an axiom. But there again, Auroretta, it's
not according to merit that those rewards, gentle and beautiful ladies,
are dispensed. I have rather less to offer than any man in the world,
but I am bold because you, dear, are just the one to be blind."

"Oh, it's not _that_, of course," said Aurora, hurriedly.

"Don't suppose for a moment that I am troubled by the size of your
fortune or the size of my own. You haven't any money, dear. Others have
your money. I have almost to laugh at the splendid speed with which that
open granary of yours will be eaten clean by all the birds coming to
pick one seed at a time."

"You needn't laugh, then. Some of it is going to be pinned to me solid,
so that nothing can get it away from me, not even I myself."

"I am sorry to hear it. The other was so complete. Well, if you had
nothing, I should still have just enough to keep us from hunger, though
perhaps not from cold in these dear old stone houses of Italy. And
you--I know you well enough to be sure