In books and plays the young man makes love with a flow of language, a wealth of imagery, that must have taken him years to acquire.
What does the novel-reading girl think, I wonder, when the real young man proposes to her! He has not called her anything in particular.

Possibly he has got as far as suggesting she is a duck or a daisy, or hinting shyly that she is his bee or his honeysuckle: in his excitement he is not quite sure which.

In the novel she has been reading the hero has likened the heroine to half the vegetable kingdom.

Elementary astronomy has been exhausted in his attempt to describe to her the impression her appearance leaves on him.

Bond Street has been sacked in his endeavour to get it clearly home to her what different parts of her are like--her eyes, her teeth, her heart, her hair, her ears.