“Why, you see,” Godfrey rejoined, “I always supposed it would have to come, father was so anxious, and mother, too, before she died; but I guess a chap is never in a hurry to take what he is sure of, and I’ve staved it off, and never even looked love at her, except in a joking way, until this morning, when I went to call upon her at Uncle Calvert’s, and found her so pale and pensive, the result of that abominable sea-sickness, from which you know she suffered the voyage home. Now there is nothing strikes to my stomach quite so quick as sea-sickness, and I felt sorry for her, and when she told me how lonesome she was at Uncle Calvert’s, with the everlasting din of those street cars in her ears, and cried a little, why, I—I—I began to feel kind of, well, just as any chap would feel sitting by a nice girl, who, he knows, expects to marry him, with a tear running down the side of her nose, and so it was very easy for me to pick up her fat, white hands,—she _has_ pretty hands,—and pat them a little, and say: ‘Suppose we get married, Alice, and then you can live with me, and not have to stay in this poky house. Shall we, Alice?’” “‘Yes, Godfrey,’ she said, and then,—well, I’ll leave something to your imagination, only the thing is settled, and we are to go to Tiffany’s this afternoon and get the ring, and to-morrow we look at that show-house up town, which Larkin built and failed in, and I am to write to father, and the news will be over Hampstead when we get there, and I feel, as I told you, much as I did when I swallowed the cent!” This was Godfrey’s account of his engagement, from which the reader will infer that so far as his heart was concerned there was very little of it in the matter. But he did not love any one else, and that was in Alice’s favor; and she managed him so adroitly that he made a very well behaved lover, deferring to all her wishes, and treating her with attention, and even a show of tenderness when they were alone. Once, on the day before they went to Hampstead, Robert said to him: “By the way, Schuyler, is ‘_La Sœur_’ at the Hill?” “‘_La Sœur!_’ Gertie, you mean,” Godfrey replied. “I really do not know whether she has left school or not. Nobody ever mentions her in any of their letters, and I’ve lost track of her entirely. I wrote to her two or three times when she first went off to school, but she did not answer, and so I gave it up. Why, it’s four years and a half since I saw her. She must be a young lady by this time. I say, Bob, do you suppose she is as sweet and pretty now as she was when you painted that picture? I thought her then the daintiest creature I had ever seen.” Before Robert could reply there was a knock on the door, and Tom Barton was ushered in. He had come from Hampstead by the morning train, and called to see his old friends when he learned where they were. With Gertie fresh in his mind, Godfrey said to him: