"It's only 'sense' that I'm trying to make," acknowledged Guthrie. "Now look here, you Little Teacher Person, I'm going to talk to you just as bluntly as I would to another fellow. You are in a hole--the deuce of a hole! You have got typhoid fever, and it may run ten days and it may run ten weeks! And you are two thousand miles from home--among strangers! And no matter how glad I personally may be that you did push on and join us, sick or well, from every practical standpoint, of course, it surely was heedless and ill-considered of you to start off in poor health on a trip like this and run the risk of forcing perfectly unconcerned strangers to pay for it all. Personally, you seem so much to belong to me already that it gives me goose-flesh to think of your having to put yourself under obligations to any purely conscientious person. Mrs. Ellis, of course, will insist, out of common humanity, upon giving up her trip and staying behind with you, but Mrs. Ellis, Little Teacher, is on her honeymoon, and Ellis couldn't stay behind--it's his party--he'd have to go on with his people--and you'd never be able to compensate anybody for a broken honeymoon, and the Judge's youngster couldn't nurse a sick kitten, and the two women teachers from New York have been planning seven years for this trip, they told me, and we couldn't decently take it away from them. But you and I, Little Psychology Lady, are not strangers to each other. Hanlon's Mary here at the ranch house, rough as she is, has at least the serving hands of a woman, and Andrews belongs naturally to the tribe which is consecrated to inconveniences, and both can be compensated accordingly. And I would have married you, anyway, before another year was out! Yes, I would!" Apparently ignoring everything that he had said, she turned her face scowlingly toward the sound of hammering that issued suddenly through the piazza door. "Oh, Glory!" she complained. "Are they making my coffin already?" With a little laugh, Guthrie relinquished her limp fingers, and jumping up, took another swift turn along the piazza, stopping only to bang the door shut again. When he faced her once more the twinkle was all gone from his eyes. "You're quite right, what you said about men," he resumed with desperate seriousness. "We are a heap sight quicker in our susceptibilities than in our mentalities! Therefore, no sane man ever does marry till his brain has caught up with his emotions! But sometimes, you know, something happens that hustles a man's brain along a bit, and this time my brain seems fairly to have jumped to its destination and clean-beaten even the emotions in the race. In cool, positive judgment I tell you I want to marry you this afternoon."