"Help yourself; will you have a peony or a sunflower?
If you have not made up your mind, let me recommend a good large yellow sunflower." Here was a pretty beginning! "Miss Brentwood, don't laugh at me, but listen to me a moment.

I love you above all earthly things besides.

I worship the ground you walk on.
I loved you from the first moment I saw you.

I shall love you as well, ay, better, if that could be, on the day my heart is still, and my hand is cold for ever: can you tell me to hope?
Don't drive me, by one hasty half-considered word, to despair and misery for the rest of my life.
Say only one syllable of encouragement, and I will bide your time for years and years." Alice was shocked and stunned.

She saw he was in earnest, by his looks, and by his hurried, confused way of speaking.