Tom to yield to sudden impulse! Tom to be betrayed into ill-considered action! The thing was incredible. Tom had had floating ideas of how he would one day address himself to Mr. and Mrs. Elvey on the subject of marriage. He had planned a careful exposition of his prospects and intentions, such as might win the consent of Ethel's parents. He had pictured the circumspect choice of a suitable time and place in which to open his heart to Ethel, the clothing of his ideas in well-selected language, perhaps even the making of one or two apt quotations, conned beforehand for the occasion, for Ethel loved poetry. All this Tom had proposed to himself. And that all this should go to the winds, that Tom should precipitately have the matter out with Ethel herself, saying no word to her father or mother,—who could have thought it? Not Tom, certainly, and not Ethel! Never in Ethel's life had she been more astonished than by Tom's next utterance, after her pettish remark about "those horrid umbels." The pause following was long enough for Ethel to lose herself anew in thought, to forget Tom and painting, umbels and botany. Suddenly her attention was arrested by a shaky voice of genuine emotion— "It's no good, you know, Ethel! I can't help it. I can't go off, and—and leave things like this. I'm going back to Australia, you know, before long, and you'll—you'll—you'll come with me, won't you? Say you will, Ethel! I can't get along without you, and that's the truth." Was there ever a more unscientific "specimen" of a proposal? Tom seized Ethel's hand, and held it as in a vice. Ethel's eyes opened widely, and stared at him in blank-bewilderment. "Tom!" "Just say you will, and it'll be all right," pleaded Tom, discarding long words and Latin terminations with shameless promptitude. Somehow, neither long words nor Latin terminations lend themselves to love-making, or to the expression of strong feeling; and Tom's feeling for Ethel was strong of its kind. "Just say you will," reiterated Tom. "I'll do my very best to make you happy, I will indeed!" and his grasp tightened. Ethel could not have released herself by struggling, and she did not try. She looked straight at Tom, and said, "Please let go!" Tom dropped the hand as if it had been a hot potato, and Ethel rubbed it. "You hurt me!" she said. "But it doesn't matter; only you must not do that again. And please understand that I don't want any more nonsense. We are cousins and friends, that is all. We never can be anything else—never!" Tom began to beg. Tom began to implore. It was not nonsense, but sense. He meant fully all that he had said. If Ethel would only consent, he would be the happiest man living. "Oh no, you would not. We should both be wretched. I could not make you happy, and you could not make me happy."