He has no
personal feeling whatever in this eccentric proceeding: he wants to make
us all happy, especially my mother, without seeming to lay us under too
great an obligation. Surely good-nature was never carried so far before;
ha, ha! Monsieur, I will encumber you with my friendship forever, if you
permit me, but farther than that I will not abuse your generosity."
"Now look here, mademoiselle," began Raynal bluntly, "I did start with
a good motive at first, that there's no denying. But, since I have been
every day in your company, and seen how good and kind you are to all
about you, I have turned selfish; and I say to myself, what a comfort
such a wife as you would be to a soldier! Why, only to have you to
write letters home to, would be worth half a fellow's pay. Do you know
sometimes when I see the fellows writing their letters it gives me a
knock here to think I have no one at all to write to."
Josephine sighed.
"So you see I am not so mighty disinterested. Now, mademoiselle, you
speak so charmingly, I can't tell what you mean: can't tell whether
you say 'no' because you could never like me, or whether it is out of
delicacy, and you only want pressing.
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