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“But how?”

“Oh, we’ll draw lots, or toss a halfpenny, or anything you like.”

“I’d rather decide now,” she said; “you take it.”

“No, you shall.”

“I’d rather you had it. I—I don’t feel so greedy as I did yesterday,” she said.

“Neither do I. Or at any rate not in the same way.”

“Do—do take the house,” she said very earnestly.

Then I said: “My cousin Selwyn, unless you take the house, I shall make you an offer of marriage.”

“Oh!” she breathed.

“And when you have declined it, on the very proper ground of our too slight acquaintance, I will take my turn at declining. I will decline the house. Then, if you are obdurate, it will become an asylum. Don’t be obdurate. Pretend to take the house and”

She looked at me rather piteously.

“Very well,” she said, “I will pretend to take the house, and when it is restored”

“We’ll spin the penny.”

So before the waiting relations the house was adjudged to my cousin Selwyn. When