“Joan, will you marry me?”

Her eyes wandered from his face.  He waited.

“I wonder!” she said softly.  “You think that is the solution?”

“Yes.”

“How can you tell?” she broke out.  “We scarcely know each other.  I shan’t always be in this mood.  I may get restless again.  I may find it is the jerks that I really like.”

“You won’t!”

“You’re very confident.”

“I am absolutely confident.”

“‘She travels fastest who travels alone,’” misquoted Joan.

“What is the good,” said Ashe, “of traveling fast if you’re going round in a circle?  I know how you feel.  I’ve felt the same myself.  You are an individualist.  You think there is something tremendous just round the corner and that you can get it if you try hard enough.  There isn’t—­or if there is it isn’t worth getting.  Life is nothing but a mutual aid association.  I am going to help old Peters—­you are going to help me—­I am going to help you.”

“Help me to do what?”

“Make life coherent instead of a jumble.”

“Mr. Marson—–­”

“Don’t call me Mr. Marson.”

“Ashe, you don’t know what you are doing.  You don’t know me.  I’ve been knocking about the world for five years and I’m hard—­hard right through.  I should make you wretched.”

“You are not in the least hard—­and you know it.  Listen to me, Joan.  Where’s your sense of fairness?  You crash into my life, turn it upside down, dig me out of my quiet groove, revolutionize my whole existence; and now you propose to drop me and pay no further attention to me.  Is it fair?”

“But I don’t.  We shall always be the best of friends.”

“We shall—­but we will get married first.”

“You are determined?”

“I am!”

Joan laughed happily.

“How perfectly splendid!  I was terrified lest I might have made you change your mind.  I had to say all I did to preserve my self-respect after proposing to you.  Yes; I did.  How strange it is that men never seem to understand a woman, however plainly she talks!  You don’t think I was really worrying because I had lost Aline, do you?  I thought I was going to lose you, and it made me miserable.  You couldn’t expect me to say it in so many words; but I thought—­I was hoping—­you guessed.  I practically said it.  Ashe!  What are you doing?”

Ashe paused for a moment to reply.

“I am kissing you,” he said.

“But you mustn’t!  There’s a scullery maid or somebody looking through the kitchen window.  She will see us.”

Ashe drew her to him.

“Scullery maids have few pleasures,” he said.  “Theirs is a dull life.  Let her see us.”

CHAPTER XII

The Earl of Emsworth sat by the sick bed and regarded the Honorable Freddie almost tenderly.

“I fear, Freddie, my dear boy, this has been a great shock to you.”