She gave a little laugh of excitement. What fun it all was! She wondered if other people felt like this, when they were getting married. They probably knew all about it? Oh yes, of course; she'd go by his letter.... But no; because when _he_ wrote they were not engaged! So finally she thought it best to leave a blank and start straight off-- "I really don't know at all what I ought to say. I am no good at letters and this is very difficult, but I too enjoyed all our walks and things, and if you really want to marry me I don't see why we shouldn't be engaged. I liked you very much down here and hope I shall make you happy. Mother doesn't seem very keen about it, I think she thinks I am too young though I am twenty, but she has given her consent and will, I am sure, come round to it, so don't worry. "I'm afraid you'll think this letter very stupid, but you know how ashamed I always was of my ignorance. I seem to know nothing! It is very nice indeed of any one like you to care for me. "Yours, "HELENA HALLAM. "P.S.--You won't be able to tease me any more about my name, afterwards!" Perhaps to any real anthologist or expert of love-letters this would seem but little better than the attempt it answered; yet if success must be judged by results, it cannot have been much amiss, since for the first time in his life Hubert Brett was melted to a display of ridiculous emotion. "Dear little girl!" he murmured aloud and kissed the last words before her signature. As for Helena, having run out to the village and posted the letter unread by her mother--a cause of yet further misgiving to the theorist--she began to wonder ever so little whether she had done quite wisely. From somewhere (who can say whence, since some things are inborn in Man?) she had got the notion, possibly ridiculous, that courting and proposals were quite different from this. Even in the Lives and comic papers men knelt and that sort of thing. She felt she had been cheated rather of Romance. As things were, with her so ignorant and Mother like that, it was all a little of a worry. But it was also a way out.... CHAPTER IV HYMEN If Hubert had known how difficult a job it was to get married, he would never have attempted it. Or so at least he told himself. All Boyd's advice, all his own misgivings about lonely age, all Ruth's scenes, would not have driven him to so much real hard work that had no definite connection with his mapped and beloved life-career. He always had imagined that the thing took half an hour, and even then was managed by some luckless friend you roped in as best man. And here he was, worried all day about presents, relatives, guests, leases, settlements, and heaven itself even probably could not say what else, till he despaired about his autumn work. Ruth, in particular, drove him almost frantic.