"Mary Virginia, I reckon you're just about the most beautiful girl in the world. You've been run after and courted and flattered and followed until it was enough to turn any girl's head, and it would have turned any girl's head but yours. You could say to almost any man alive, Come, and he'd come--oh, yes, he'd come quick. You've got the earth to pick and choose from--but I'm asking you to pick and choose _me_. I haven't got as much to offer you as I shall have some of these days, but I've got me myself, body and brain and heart and soul, sound to the core, and all of me yours, and I think that counts most, if you care as I do. Mary Virginia, will you marry me?" "Oh, but, Laurence! Why--Laurence--I--indeed, I didn't know--I didn't think--" stammered the girl. "At least, I didn't dream you cared--like that." "Didn't you? Well, all I can say is, you've been mighty blind, then. For I do care. I guess I've always cared like that, only, somehow, it's taken this one short winter to drive home what I'd been learning all my life?" said he, soberly. "I reckon I've been just like other fool-boys, Mary Virginia. That is, I spooned a bit around every good looking girl I ran up against, but I soon found out it wasn't the real thing, and I quit. Something in me knew all along I belonged to somebody else. To you. I believe now--Mary Virginia, I believe with all my heart--that I cared for you when you were squalling in your cradle." "Oh! ... Did I squall, really?" "_Squall?_ Sometimes it was tummy and sometimes it was temper. Between them you yelled like a Comanche," said this astonishing lover. Mary Virginia tilted her head back, adorably. "It was very, very noble of you to mind me--under the circumstances," she conceded, graciously. "Believe me, it was," agreed Laurence. "I didn't know it, of course, but even at that tender age my fate was upon me, for I _liked_ to mind you. Even the bawling didn't daunt me, and I adored you when you resembled a squab. Yes, I was in love with you then. I'm in love with you now. My girl, my own girl, I'll go out of this world and into the next one loving you." "Then why," she asked reproachfully, "haven't you said so?" "Why haven't I said what?" "Why, you know. That you--loved me, Laurence." Her rich voice had sunk to a whisper. "Good Lord, haven't I been saying it?" "No, you haven't! You've been merely asking me to marry you. But you haven't said a word about loving me, until this very minute!" "But you must know perfectly well that I'm crazy about you, Mary Virginia!" said the boy, and his voice trembled with bewilderment as well as passion. "How in heaven's name could I help being crazy about you? Why, from the beginning of things, there's never been anybody else, but just you. I never even pretended to care for anybody else. No, there's nobody but you. Not for me. You're everything and all, where I'm concerned. And--please, please look up, beautiful, and tell me the truth: look at me, Mary Virginia!"