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 CHAPTER XVII HE REALLY DOES PROPOSE, AND I AM HAPPY I actually on my way home. You may think that a bit sudden, but you can't possibly think it more sudden than I do myself. I was to have stayed in India until the end of February, and returned home with Lady Manifold and Marjory, but—well, things happened. You see it was like this. Berengaria and John and I had returned from the Great Durbar, and were slowly recovering from the strain and excitement of it in the peace of Slumpanugger. As the Scotchman said when they asked him how he felt soon after his wife was dead, 'It was verra dull but verra peaceful.' In a while we were to start on a camping tour, and Berengaria had a big party coming out to join us for a shoot. It was glorious weather—fresh clear air under a cloudless sky, and just for those few days one was content to sit all day under the trees in Berengaria's delightful garden idly revelling in the present, and dreaming lazily of things past and things to come. It was in that garden that it happened.