If I was a boy when I was, as you say, silly, I was in earnest.

It was nonsense to ask you, to say you would marry me some day.

It wasn't so very long ago after all; but I agree with you, it _was_ foolish.

Now I mean to make no such proposal." "Please, John." She looked up at him as he stood over her so grave, so earnest--and so like Uncle Jim.

For the time she got the fleeting impression of this being a man.
He hardly heard her appeal.