"Come, Polly, don't beat about the bush any longer," he said at last,
amused and a little irritated at her half-hints and little feminine
_finesses_. "I know what you want to ask; and as there's no use
making a secret of it, I will take my turn in asking. Have I any chance,
do you think?"
"Any chance?--about Katy, do you mean? Oh, Ned, you make me so happy."
"Yes; about her, of course."
"I don't see why you should say 'of course,'" remarked his sister, with
the perversity of her sex, "when it's only five or six weeks ago that I
was lying awake at night for fear you were being gobbled up by that
Lilly Page."
"There was a little risk of it," replied her brother, seriously. "She's
awfully pretty and she dances beautifully, and the other fellows were
all wild about her, and--well, you know yourself how such things go. I
can't see now what it was that I fancied so much about her, I don't
suppose I could have told exactly at the time; but I can tell without
the smallest trouble what it is in--the other."
"In Katy? I should think so," cried Mrs. Ashe, emphatically; "the two
are no more to be compared than--than--well, bread and syllabub! You can
live on one, and you can't live on the other."
"Come, now, Miss Page isn't so bad as that. She is a nice girl enough,
and a pretty girl too,--prettier than Katy; I'm not so far gone that I
can't see that. But we won't talk about her, she's not in the present
question at all; very likely she'd have had nothing to say to me in any
case.
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