"And I hope we always will be." "I hope so, too!" he answered in quite a matter-of-fact way.

"You see I'm rather a clumsy chap with women----" She smiled a little.
"Are you ?" "Yes,--I mean I never get on with them quite as well as other fellows do somehow--and--er--and--what I want to say, Miss Mary, is that I've never got on with any woman so well as I have with you--and----" He paused.

At no time in his life had he been at such a loss for language.

His heart was thumping in the most extraordinary fashion, and he prodded the end of his walking-stick into the ground with quite a ferocious earnestness.

She was still looking at him and still smiling.
"And," he went on ramblingly, "that's why I hope we shall always be good friends." As he uttered this perfectly commonplace remark, he cursed himself for a fool.