"Hetty was now coming twenty-nine--we never spoke of this, but I could count back--and it's my firm belief that no man had ever proposed marriage or anything else on earth to her. Wilbur Todd had once endeavoured to hold her hand out on the porch at a country-club dance and she had repulsed him in all kindness but firmly. She told him she couldn't bring herself to permit a familiarity of that sort except to the man who would one day lead her to the altar, which is something I believe she got from writing to a magazine about a young girl's perplexities. And here, in spite of her record, this poor thing had dared to raise her eyes to none other than this Mr. Burchell Daggett. There was something kind of grand and despairing about the impudence of it when you remember these here trained efficiency experts she was competing with. Yet so it was. She would drop in on me after school for a cup of tea and tell me frankly how distinguished his manner was and what shapely features he had and what fine eyes, and how there was a certain note in his voice at times, and had I ever noticed that one stubborn lock of hair that stuck out back of his left ear? Of course that last item settled it. When they notice that lock of hair you know the ship has struck the reef and all hands are perishing. "And it seemed that the cuss had not only shown her more than a little attention at evening functions but had escorted her to the midspring production of 'Hamlet' by the Red Gap Amateur Theatrical and Dramatic Society. True, he had conducted himself like a perfect gentleman every minute they was alone together, even when they had to go home in Eddie Pierce's hack because it was raining when the show let out--but would I, or would I not, suspect from all this that he was in the least degree thinking of her in a way that--you know! "Poor child of twenty-eight, with her hungry eyes and flushed face while she was showing down her hand to me! I seen the scoundrel's play at once. Hetty was the one safe bet for him in Red Gap's social whirl. He was wise, all right--this Mr. D. He'd known in a second he could trust himself alone with that girl and be as safe as a babe in its mother's arms. Of course I couldn't say this to Hetty. I just said he was a man that seemed to know his own mind very clearly, whatever it was, and Hetty blushed some more and said that something within her responded to a certain note in his voice. We let it go at that.