well, I've just won the deuce of a lot of money in there..."

"Would you buy me with your gold?"

"I mean to say, we should have enough to start on, and... of course I've
made an infernal hash of everything I've tried up till now, but there
must be something I can do, and you can jolly well bet I'd have a
goodish stab at it. I mean to say, with you to buck me up and so forth,
don't you know. Well, I mean..."

"Has it struck you that I may already be engaged to someone else?"

"Oh, golly! Are you?"

For the first time he turned and faced her, and there was a look in his
eyes which touched Sally and drove all sense of the ludicrous out of
her. Absurd as it was, this man was really serious.

"Well, yes, as a matter of fact I am," she said soberly.

Ginger Kemp bit his lip and for a moment was silent.

"Oh, well, that's torn it!" he said at last.

Sally was aware of an emotion too complex to analyse. There was pity in
it, but amusement too. The emotion, though she did not recognize it, was
maternal. Mothers, listening to their children pleading with engaging
absurdity for something wholly out of their power to bestow, feel that
same wavering between tears and laughter. Sally wanted to pick Ginger up
and kiss him. The one thing she could not do was to look on him, sorry