“Yes, but, you know, life is more than letters.  Not so much in the books as in you.  Although I am going to ask you to let me take one of them home, and I shall enjoy reading it, my actual object is to find an excuse for coming again.”

“Which will you take?” she asked.

“This looks promising,” said Jimmy, selecting a grey-covered volume.

“It is about an ill-assorted marriage,” she explained.

“Oh well, the majority of modern novels are.”

“Certainly the majority of my father’s,” she said.  “And yet his own marriage was such a perfect success.”

“Obviously!” answered Jimmy, turning to face her.

“You have heard——­”

“Not at all.  The happy country has no history, you know.  I merely judge by the result.”

Her eyes fell under his gaze, and he saw the colour slowly mantle her face and neck.  “Oh, why do you flatter me?” she murmured.

“Don’t you like flattery?”

Now she raised her eyes again, meeting his own.

“Oh, I love it,” she admitted.  “But there are so very many undesirable things I adore.”

“I wish I might become one of them!”

“Do you fulfil the condition of undesirability?” asked Bridget.

“Anyhow, I am one of the unemployed,” he answered.  “You see, I have been almost converted to opinions which cut away the ground from under my own feet.  I have lived so far a delightful life, and now my conscience is beginning to nag me.  The question is whether I am enjoying myself at some poor wretches’ continual expense.”

“Why have you never married, Mr. Clynesworth?” asked Bridget.

“I have seen only one woman I could ever care to make my wife.”

“Isn’t one enough?”

“She is bound to be in this country,” was the answer; “although we may have to alter all that in order to get rid of our surplus!”

“Why haven’t you married that one?”

“Well, I haven’t asked her yet,” said Jimmy.  “Of course, I am going to, but there are, I suppose, rules to be observed.  Hitherto, to tell you the truth, I have been a little frightened at the bare idea.  One has so many object lessons!  I know a man who was married a week or so ago.  He was immensely fond of the girl, but I can swear she doesn’t care for him a rap.  Yet I imagine she succeeded in satisfying him that she was—­well, over head and ears in love!  So she was with some one else.”

“Still, with so many awful examples,” suggested Bridget, “you will naturally be cautious.  For your own part, you would not put the momentous question to any woman unless you had the most perfect confidence——­”

“Oh, I have!” he replied, more enthusiastically than she had ever heard him speak.  “Being human, I suppose I am bound to assume there must be blemishes about her somewhere—­I don’t know where!  But,” Jimmy continued, “of one thing I am as certain as a man can be of anything in this world.”