Page:Tales of the long bow.pdf/128

 hour of victory; and is this the graceful fashion of an older world? Have you become a New Woman, by any ichance? What has your father been doing? What does he say–about us?"

"My father says you are quite mad, of course," she replied, "but he can't help liking you either. He says he doesn't believe in people marrying out of their class; but that if I must marry a gentleman he'd rather it was somebody like you, and not one of the new gentlemen."

"Well, I'm glad I'm an old gentleman, any how," he answered somewhat mollified. "But really this prevalence of common sense is getting quite dangerous. Will nothing rouse you all to a little unreality; to saying, so to speak, 'O, for the wings of a pig that I might flee away and be at rest.' What would you say if I turned the world upside down and set my foot upon the sun and moon?"

"I should say," replied Joan Hardy, still smiling, "that you wanted somebody to look after you."

He stared at her for a moment in an almost abstracted fashion as if he had not fully understood; then he laughed quite suddenly and uncontrollably, like a man who has seen something very close to him that he knows he is a