anybody else's girl, are you?"

"Just what do you mean by that?"

"Well, in other words, then, are you engaged, betrothed, plighted,
promised, bespoke----"

Patty burst out laughing. "I'm not any of those things," she said,
"but, if ever I am, I shall be bespoke. I think that's the loveliest
word! Fancy being anybody's Bespoke!"

"Of course, it's up to me to give you an immediate opportunity,"
said Cameron, sighing. "But somehow I don't quite dare bespeak you
on such short acquaintance."

"Faint heart----"

"Oh, it isn't that! I'm brave enough. But I'm an awfully punctilious
man. If I were going to bespeak you, now, I should think it my duty
to go first to your father and correctly ask his permission to pay
my addresses to his daughter."

"Good gracious! How do you pay addresses? I never had an address
paid to me in my life."

"Shall I show you how?" And Cameron jumped up and fell on one knee
before Patty, with a comical expression of a make-believe love-sick
swain.

Patty dearly loved fooling, and she smiled back at him roguishly,