"'Archly the maiden smiled, and with eyes overrunning with laughter said in a tremulous voice, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?"'" "I don't know what you're talking about." "Don't you know _The Courtship of Miles Standish_? I thought that must have been where you got the idea. I had to learn chunks of it at school, and even at that tender age I always thought Miles Standish a perfect goop. 'If the great captain of Plymouth is so very eager to wed me, Why does he not come himself and take the trouble to woo me? If I am not worth the wooing, I surely am not worth the winning.' And yards more of it. I knew it by heart once. Well, what I want to know is, do you expect my answer direct, or would you prefer that I communicated with your agent?" "I don't understand." "Don't you? No? Really?" "Pat, what's the matter?" "Oh, nothing much. When we were dancing just now, Hugo proposed to me." A cold hand clutched at John's heart. He had not a high opinion of his cousin's fascinations, but the thought of anybody but himself proposing to Pat was a revolting one. "Oh, did he?' "Yes, he did. For you." "For me? How do you mean, for me?" "I'm telling you. He asked me to marry you. And very eloquent he was, too. All the people who heard him--and there must have been dozens who did--were much impressed." She stopped: and, as far as such a thing is possible at the Mustard Spoon when Baermann's Collegiate Buddies are giving an encore of "My Sweetie Is A Wow," there was silence. Emotion of one sort or another had deprived Pat of words: and, as for John, he was feeling as if he could never speak again. He had flushed a dusky red, and his collar had suddenly become so tight that he had all the sensations of a man who is being garrotted. And so powerfully had the shock of this fearful revelation affected his mind that his only coherent thought was a desire to follow Hugo up to the balcony, tear him limb from limb, and scatter the fragments onto the tables below. Pat was the first to find speech. She spoke quickly, stormily. "I can't understand you, Johnnie. You never used to be such a jellyfish. You did have a mind of your own once. But now ... I believe it's living at Rudge all the time that has done it. You've got lazy and flabby. It's turned you into a vegetable. You just loaf about and go on and on, year after year, having your three fat meals a day and your comfortable rooms and your hot-water bottle at night...." "I don't!" cried John, stung by this monstrous charge from the coma which was gripping him.