be a
great sight."

There is no poetry in a two-step, and if there were it would have been
lost in hopping up and down with Tony, so I chose the moon. I thought
the moon a perfectly safe object to gaze at with such a jolly young man,
who made jokes at everything in the heavens or upon the earth; and
unsuspectingly I went with him to a nook on the veranda screened off
with tall plants from an adjacent hammock. It was a nook intended for
two and no more. There were a great many nooks of that sort on Mrs.
Kilburn's veranda. She specialized in flirtation architecture.

"Tell me about everything, please," I cheerfully began. "We haven't very
long, have we?"

"That's the worst of it," said Tony, "and that's why I must be careful
to tell you only the important things. There's just one that really
interests me."

"What's that?" I asked eagerly. "I hope not that you expect fighting?"

"No such luck, I'm afraid. But I'm not worrying about that now. What I
want to tell you is this." And to my stupefaction he shot a proposal at
my head as if it came out of a field gun. I knew he liked me, and liked
to be with me, but I couldn't associate the idea of anything so serious
as marriage with Tony Dalziel. I gasped and said he couldn't mean it,
but he assured me that he did, and a dictionary full of other assurances
besides.

Perhaps, if I had not seen Eagle March and fallen in love with him once
and forever, I might have thought twice before saying "No" to Tony, if
only for the pride of being engaged sooner than Di, and when I wasn't
yet eighteen. Tony Dalziel was what all women call "such a dear!" and,
besides, he had--or would have--plenty of money, a consideration in our
family. I could imagine what a rage Father would be in with me if he
knew what I was doing at that moment, calmly refusing a heaven-sent
opportunity. But Eagle March, though he was not for me, made all the
difference, and put my heart into a convent where it was now undergoing
its novitiate. I let the opportunity slip, and told Tony how sorry I was
to hurt him. But he wasn't inclined to take that for an answer. He
wanted to know if I wouldn't "leave it open," in case anything happened
to make me change my mind. I warned him that, so far as I could see, I
would never change it; but if an "optimist will op"--as Tony
remarked--what can you do? You can't prevent his opping, and rather than
hear an irrevocable word he bade me good-bye while I protested. This was
i