Page:The Sick-A-Bed Lady.djvu/93

 "Oh, I wanted to speak to you," he began. Then his eyes focused in amazement on a perfectly huge bunch of violets which Noreen was clasping desperately in her arms.

"Good Heavens!" he cried. "Is anybody dead?"

But Noreen held the violets up like a bulwark and commenced to laugh across them.

"He did propose," she said, "and I accepted him! Does it look as though I had chosen to be engaged with violets instead of a ring?" she suggested blithely. "It's only that I asked him if he would be apt to send me violets, and when he said: Yes, every week, I just asked if I please could n't have them all at once. There must be a Billion dol lars worth here. I'm going to have a tea-party to morrow and invite the Much-Loved Girl." The conscious, childish malice of her words twisted her lips into an elfish smile. "It's Mr. Ernest Dextwood," she rattled on: "Ernest Dextwood, the Coffee Merchant. He's a widower now—with three children. Do—you—think—that—I—will—make—a—good—stepmother?"

The violets began to quiver against her breast, but her chin went higher in rank defiance of the perplexing something which she saw in the Political Economist's narrowing eyes. She began to quote with playful recklessness Byron's pert parody: