Now, what do you say to marrying me?"

"I say you had no such notion in your head the last time you and I
talked together. When did it seize you?" I demanded, suspiciously.

"I began to think about it seriously--er--ah--some days ago," he
said, reddening.

"What day, to be exact?"

"Well," said he, resentfully, "it occurred to me last Wednesday, if
you want to be so all-fired sure!"

"What happened last Wednesday to make you think of asking me to
marry you?"

The doctor looked at me very much as a little boy looks at a
grown-up who is holding a soapy wash-cloth in one hand and an ear in
the other.

"What do you want to know for?"

"Because. I just want to know because. Well?" He squirmed, and was
silent. "Was it because you have ceased to care for Alicia,
already?" His glare answered that question. "No? Why, then, didn't
you ask Alicia, instead of coming to me for second choice? Look
here, Doctor Richard Geddes: if I was not firmly and truly your
friend, I should be furious, do you understand? Or," I added,
darkly, "I might even revenge myself by taking you at your word!"

"Sophronisba Two!" The doctor looked at, me piteously.

"Why didn't you ask Alicia?" I persisted, inexorably.

"I did!" gulped the doctor. "But she said she couldn't. She said,
why didn't I care for you instead of her? You were so much
better--and--and I'd be happier with you, for I'd have the most
unselfish angel--" he stopped miserably.

"Well?"

"Well, I kept turning it over in my mind; and the more I thought of
it, the clearer I perceived that with a wife like you I'd be a
better and a more worth-while man. I--I think so much of you, Sophy,
that I'm telling you the whole truth," he finished.

"That's why I'm going to keep on being friends with you--better
friends than ever," I told him.

"You're going to marry me, then, Sophy?"

"Didn't you just hear me tell you I meant to keep on being friends
with you?"

"You won't, then?"

"I won't, then."

"Yet there are good reasons why you might reconsider your decision,"
he said, after a pause. "We are so diametrically opposed it would
seem inevitable we should marry each other. Why, Sophy, we've got
enough to quarrel happily about for the rest of our lives. For
instance, do you sleep with all your windows open?"

"I close two, and leave two open."

"Every window open, day and night, hot or cold, rain or shine," said
the doctor, firmly. "Do you use pillows?"

"Two."

"None