It's taken three and a half years."

"Because you were such a duffer. You behaved as if you expected the poor
child to propose to you herself. I've been trying to make you see it for
the last three and a half years, and you wouldn't. There never was such
a chap for not seeing what's under his nose."

"Norah isn't under my nose; she's miles above it, and if it comes to
that, I've _seen_ it for the last three years."

He had tripped me up by the heels.

"There you are--that brings it to the six months I gave you."

"I didn't mean I was thinking of it then. How could I be?"

"Of course you weren't thinking of it. But _she_ was."

"Norah? Not she! A child of seventeen!"

"I don't mean Norah. I mean Viola."

"Viola?"

"Yes. You didn't see what the unscrupulous minx was after. She was
plotting it and planning it the first time you were at Canterbury. I got
a letter from her at Bruges--I can't show it you--telling me not to worry
about you--I _was_ worrying about you, though you were such a damn fool,
if you don't mind my saying so. She said you'd got over it all right. She
wouldn't be surprised if some day you married Norah.

"So you see," he said, "you needn't bother about Viola. She knew you
couldn't keep it up for ever."

"Keep what up?"

(I knew; but something in his tone or in his twinkle made me pretend I
didn't.)

"Your wonderful attitude," he said. "She meant you to marry Norah."

"Why--on earth--should she have wanted that?"

"Well--because I worried about you, and she wanted me to be happy. And
because she worried about you, and wanted you to be happy. And because
she worried about the Kid, and wanted her to be happy. And because she
wanted the rest of them to be happy too."

I said I didn't know what I'd done to be so happy.

"You've done nothing. You don't owe it to yourself that you're happy. My
dear fellow, you've been watched, and looked after, and protected for
three and a half years with an incessant care. If you'd been left to
yourself you'd have bungled the whole business. Either you wouldn't have
proposed to her at all, or you'd have proposed three times running when
it was too late."

I pointed out to him that I hadn't proposed three times running, neither
was I too late.

"All the same," he said, "you wouldn't have thought of it if she hadn't
gone to the Thesigers. And she wouldn't have gone to the Thesigers if
Viola hadn't got the Thesigers to ask her. It was a put-up job. I tel