The Dugdale Millions — page 175: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A BOX AND JTS CONTENTS. 165 she could look down on her companion, reclining in an angle of two other rocks. ‘No, indeed. I know better than that.”’ Bessie blushed and laughed again. | ‘Perhaps you will tell me what it is then. For if it is not that I don’t know.” “The fib isnot becoming. No,no. It’s Mr. Mason — Dick.” “Mr. Mason!” Supreme contempt and heightened color upon the part of Bessie. “The blushes are!’’ commented the tormentor on the rock. “Yes, Mr Mason. The quarrel, in which you were so perverse and Dick so stupid, has been Retiied,- “You can call Mr. Mason anything but stupid,” Bessie replied, very quick in defense. ‘‘ Father says he is one of the very brightest men he ever knew.” “Oh! Does the father also say that he would like that same ‘one of the brightest men’ for ason-in-law ?”’ “ You are absurd.” “Of course Mr. Mason desires to personate that hatacter? “Tow should I know? He has never informed me as to his desires.” “Oh! You do have a perverse streak, Bessie. Do you mean to stand there and deliberately tell me that Mr. Mason has not told you what all the rest of us know—that he loves you ?”’ “ Wallis, 1 am not standing, so I could not deliber- ately tell youanything that way. But I will not equivo- cate. Mr. Mason did onone occasion intimate some- thing of the kind, but—” and she hesitated long enough to recall, with a happy smile playing about her lips, the picture of Dick standing in that very place, with earnest face and in tones almost fierce, telling her of his unconquerable love for herself, and then went on— “but he has never asked me to be his wife.” Comicboclk C@ 3