Page:The Black Cat v01no07 (1896-04).pdf/46

44 as well known here as Jay Gould's or George Washington's, and you know how perfectly horrid men are, and how they always think girls boast of their offers. And you know, too, Lucie, that you and Nannie are the only living souls that know about that affair, and that Lennox told Nannie himself. And you, dear thing, never would have known it at all if you hadn't overheard his first proposal, and that ridiculous declaration that he was going to repeat it annually until I accepted him or married some one else. Dear me! I never imagined then he'd keep his word. I do really think the constancy of man is awful.

Of course, now you'll want to hear how it happened, and I suppose you might as well know. Lennox had something to do with the company in which Jack's life was insured, and he came to see Nannie several times on business. Of course he saw me, but somehow his manner was different, and I really thought he meant to be just nice and friendly. Once or twice I saw him alone, but he never even looked at me in a way to make me suspicious, and always before that when we've been alone together—well it has been

"The embrace of pining eyes,"

all the time. The last afternoon he called—with some papers and things for Nannie—she was in bed with a headache. He explained the business matters to me, and then we actually talked politics— not a word of anything else, I assure you—for half an hour. Then he told me he was going to Boston that night by the Fall River Line, and bade me good-by. But just as he reached the door he turned around as if he'd forgotten something, shut the door, put his back against it, and said, "Polly, will you be my wife?"

I was utterly taken aback. "Lennox," I said, "how long do you mean to keep up this absurd performance?"

"It isn't a complimentary way of alluding to my offers of marriage," he replied calmly, "but I intend to repeat them until you are engaged."

"Then," I said desperately, "I will be engaged to the very next man that offers himself to me."

"How good of you," said he, "to afford me such unexpected