"Look here, Marion," I said abruptly, "what would you marry on?"
"What IS the good?" she began.
"Would you marry on three hundred a year?"
She looked at me for a moment. "That's six pounds a week," she said.
"One could manage on that, easily. Smithie's brother--No, he only gets
two hundred and fifty. He married a typewriting girl."
"Will you marry me if I get three hundred a year?"
She looked at me again, with a curious gleam of hope.
"IF!" she said.
I held out my hand and looked her in the eyes. "It's a bargain," I said.
She hesitated and touched my hand for an instant. "It's silly," she
remarked as she did so. "It means really we're--" She paused.
"Yes?" said I.
"Engaged. You'll have to wait years. What good can it do you?"
"Not so many years." I answered.
For a moment she brooded.
Then she glanced at me with a smile, half-sweet, half-wistful, that has
stuck in my memory for ever.
"I like you!" she said. "I shall like to be engaged to you."
And, faint on the threshold of hearing, I caught her ventured "dear!"
It's odd that in writing this down my memory passed over all that
intervened and I feel it all again, and once again I'm Marion's boyish
lover taking great joy in such rare and little things.
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