"I hope so, but I doubt it; I might have known I was feeling too much bucked up. You know she never said exactly yes; she sort of let me take it for granted, and perhaps I took it a little too much for granted; I feel that perhaps that's how it is. But if she's off with me, I'm done--clean. She could make a man of me, even the kind of article the governor thinks a man; but no one else could. If she won't have me, I shall emigrate, that's what I shall do; I shall go to one of those cheery spots where you get knocked out by blackwater fever, or sleeping sickness, or something nice of that sort, three months after you've landed." Notice being given that dinner was ready, Rodney led Stella into the private room in which it was to be served cheerfully enough, bestowing on her admiring glances and whispering what he meant to be sweet things into her pretty ear as they went. "My hat! that's a duck of a frock you're arrayed in; you do look scrumptious." "I'm glad you think so." The maid's manner was a trifle prim; she plainly wished him to understand that she was still a little out with him. He smiled at her. "I don't know what you're laughing at." "Would you rather I cried?" "I'm afraid poor Tom feels like crying. Isn't it strange Mary not coming, and sending no message, or anything--nothing to explain? Have you heard how she treated Tom?" They had reached the dinner-table, and were settling themselves in their places. "Stella, be so good as to understand, once for all, that there's only one subject to-night, and that's you. All other subjects are tabooed. Are you quite comfortable? Don't put your chair too far off; so that, if you feel like it, you can put your baby foot out towards mine and with your wee slipper crush my favourite corn." "Rodney, I'm glad you are going to talk to me at last, though I don't suppose you have thought of me once all day." "Shall I tell you what I've been looking for ever since I came?" "I expect for somewhere to smoke." "I've been looking for--say, a curtained nook, where I can have you alone for about five minutes, and have a few of those kisses of which I have been dreaming this livelong day." "If you had come and fetched me you might have had one kiss--in the cab." "I'll have one kiss when I take you back--one!" "Oh, you are going to take me back?" "I am; and I'm going to eat you on the way; then you'll understand what you escaped by my not fetching you." "You're not to talk like that; people will hear you." "Let 'em. Fancy if you'd arrived here with that lovely frock all crumpled--two in a cab! People would have wondered what you had been doing." "Rodney, if you will talk like that I shall crush your favourite corn." "Crush it!" "Please pass me the salt." Whether, while he passed her the salt, she did crush it, there was nothing to show.