“Then get your machine and rush me away,” cried Sadie, “and marry me the first minute you can; and we’ll get out of this to Florida in the morning, and see the garage and the sunshine and the butterflies. It’s a square deal now, Teddy-Eddy. Stand up and kiss your honey-bird, you brave, silly, big-hearted, mush-headed little man; for I love you so much I couldn’t have offered you anything less, and I’ve waited so long, my heart feels like it will burst!” [Illustration] [Illustration] T. TEMBAROM BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT Author of “That Lass o’ Lowrie’s,” “The Shuttle,” etc. WITH DECORATIVE PICTURES BY CHARLES S. CHAPMAN CHAPTER XXXII When Tembarom repeated the words “and you’re going to listen,” Lady Joan began to stare at him. It was not the ridiculous boyish drop in his voice which arrested her attention. It was a fantastic, incongruous, wholly different thing. He had suddenly dropped his slouch, and stood upright. Did he realize that he had slung his words at her as if they were an order given with the ring of authority? “I’ve not bucked against anything you’ve said or done since you’ve been here,” he went on, speaking fast and grimly. “I didn’t mean to. I had my reasons. There were things that I’d have given a good deal to say to you and ask you about, but you wouldn’t let me. You wouldn’t give me a chance to square things for you--if they could be squared. You threw me down every time I tried.” He was too wildly incomprehensible with his changes from humanness to folly. Remembering what he had attempted to say on the day he had followed her in the avenue, she was inflamed again. “What in the name of New York slang does that mean?” she demanded. “Never mind New York,” he answered, cool as well as grim. “A fellow that’s learned slang in the streets has learned something else as well. He’s learned to keep his eyes open. He’s on to a way of seeing things. And what I’ve seen is that you’re so doggone miserable that--that you’re almost down and out.” This time she spoke to him in the voice with the quality of deadliness in it which she had used to her mother. “Do you think that because you are in your own house you can be as intrusively insulting as you choose?” she said. “No, I don’t,” he answered. “What I think is quite different. I think that if a man _has_ a house of his own, and there’s any one in big trouble under the roof of it,--a woman most of all,--he’s a cheap skate if he doesn’t get busy and try to help--just plain, straight _help_.” He saw in her eyes all her concentrated disdain of him, but he went on, still obstinate and cool and grim. “I guess ‘help’ is too big a word just yet. That may come later, and it mayn’t. What I’m going to have a try at now is making it easier for you--just easier.” Her contemptuous gesture registered no impression on him, as he paused a moment and looked fixedly at her.