Once free to turn one's face to the wide sweep without, one was quite ready to cast loving looks back at the enclosure.
And so she softened, prepared to deal tenderly with Captain Prescott, as he seemed then, less the individual than the incarnation of outlived days.
It was into that mellowed, sweetly melancholy mood he sent the following: "And so, Katie, I wanted to talk to you about it.

You're such a good pal--such a bully sort--I wanted to tell you that I care for Ann--and want to marry her." She dropped from the high-board fence with a jolt that well-nigh knocked her senseless.
"I suppose," he said, "that you must have suspected." "Well, not exactly suspected," said Katie, feeling her bumps, as it were.
Her first emotion was that it was pretty shabby treatment to accord one who was at such pains to be kind.

It gave one a distinctly injured feeling--getting all sweet and mellow only to be dashed to the ground and let lie there in that foolish looking--certainly foolish feeling heap! But as soon as she had picked herself up--and Katie was too gamey to be long in picking herself up--she wondered what under heaven she was going to do about things! What had she let herself in for now! The pains of an injured dignity--throb of a pricked self love--were forgotten in this real problem, confronting her.

She even grew too grave to think about how funny it was.
For Katie saw this as genuinely serious.
"Harry," she asked, "have you said anything to your mother ?" "Well, not _said_ anything," he laughed.
"But she knows ?" "Mother's keen," he replied.
"I once thought I was," was Katie's unspoken comment.
"And have you--you are so good as to confide in me, so I presume to ask questions--have you said anything to Ann ?" "No, not _said_ anything," he laughed again.
"But _she_ knows ?" "I don't know.

I wondered if you did." "No," said Katie, "I don't.