Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/215

Rh inexactness engendered by her magnanimity. "That's why I thought I ought to tell you what you'd like."

"Why, do you suppose if I'd known where that first visit of ours to Waterlow was going to bring you out I'd have taken you within fifty miles" He stopped suddenly; then in another tone, "Lord, there's no one like you! And you told them it was all you?"

"Never mind what I told them."

"Miss Francie," said George Flack, "if you'll marry me I'll never ask a question again. I'll go into some other business."

"Then you didn't do it on purpose?" Francie asked.

"On purpose?"

"To get me into a quarrel with them—so that I might be free again."

"Well, of all the ideas!" the young man exclaimed, staring. "Your mind never produced that—it was your sister's."

"Wasn't it natural it should occur to me, since if, as you say, you would never consciously have been the means"

"Ah, but I was the means!" Mr. Flack interrupted. "We must go, after all, by what did happen."

"Well, I thanked you when I drove with you and let you draw me out. So we're square, aren't we?" The term Francie used was a colloquialism