“What for?”

“Well—you see—what age are you—eighteen?”

“Nearly.”

“Whew! Only seventeen! You’ll make a delightful little wife when the nonsense is trained out of you. Any man would want to marry you because of your mother.”

“I don’t know your mother, so I don’t know if there is any reason at all why anyone would want to marry you.”

He laughed consumedly, I too; it was so silly.

“It is a serious consideration for a man of thirty-six to think of a girl of eighteen. Twenty years on I’ll be an old chap wanting to settle down and you’ll be just in your prime.”

“Why consider such silly things without foundation?”

“Must I shave off my beard?”

“Why do you tolerate such a monstrosity?”

“It can go any minute you say.”

“You might collapse like Samson and then need a winch to hoist you about.”

“Do you like beards?”

“As if anyone could like a beard!”

“I must go to the barber tomorrow,”

“Don’t shave it off just yet.”

“Why?”

“I shan’t tell you.” I had the laugh to myself now. After only thirty-five hours he seemed to be buckling like the young men, and what a trophy he would be, with his beard, like a big bear on a chain. This matter of beard was a lively test. I had applied it with the result that all my young men friends who had had moustaches were now clean-shaven, while those who had been clean-shaven were assiduously growing moustaches. Some of the latter were of the cricket style—eleven hairs a side.

“Well now, when I marry you I don’t think I’ll approve of any more of this writing. I’d be jealous of it. You’d want to be wasting your spare time on that when I wanted to play with you.”

I flashed out at this. “Supposing I said that you would have to give up breeding wool or horses and be hanging around ready to play with me.”

“That’s a different matter. You’re a woman, and Nature settled it long ago. I have nothing to do with it.”

“But I have, you conceited lord of creation!”

At this Ma came in the door looking trenchantly at me. “Do you know that your daughter has just called me a conceited lord of creation?”

“Men deserve what they get for being so foolish,” said Ma. “You are not going to be as silly as the boys, are you?”

I left him to Ma.

The following morning he again invited me to go to the Show with him in his buggy, drawn by the dashing pair that seemed to run above the road instead of on it. Ma and Pa both said I could go, Ma adding the rider, “If you behave yourself.”

“I’ll see that she behaves,” said Mr. Beauchamp in his good-humoured drawl.

“And I’ll see that he behaves,” thinks I to myself, pricked to pay him out for his self-confidence. Billy Olliver was the instrument at hand. Billy’s horse, Captain Phillip, was the best hunter of the year, and I had promised to take my habit and ride him in the lady’s hack class. Well, my lord Henry could drive me to the door of the hotel, and when he came out I should be departing with Billy. There was time to send a letter and get the plot in train.