“And why didn’t you come?”
“How little you know about girls? Of course
I had to go with the one I—I—I—;
well with the one I did not love down to the very
soles of his feet” And then there was the journey
with the parrot. “I rather liked the bird.
I don’t know that you said very much, but I
think you would have said less if there had been no
bird.”
“In fact I have been a fool all along.”
“You weren’t a fool when you took me out
through the orchard and caught me when I jumped over
the wall. Do you remember when you asked me,
all of a sudden, whether I should like to be your wife?
You weren’t a fool then.”
“But you knew what was coming.”
“Not a bit of it. I knew it wasn’t
coming. I had quite made up my mind about that.
I was as sure of it;—oh, as sure of it as
I am that I’ve got you now. And then it
came;—like a great thunderclap.”
“A thunderclap, Mary!”
“Well;—yes. I wasn’t quite
sure at first. You might have been laughing at
me;—mightn’t you?”
“Just the kind of joke for me!”
“How was I to understand it all in a moment?
And you made me repeat all those words. I believed
it then, or I shouldn’t have said them.
I knew that must be serious.” And so she
deified him, and sat at his feet looking up into his
eyes, and fooled him for a while into the most perfect
happiness that a man ever knows in this world.
But she was not altogether happy herself till she
had got Larry to come to her at the house at Bragton
and swear to her that he would be her friend.
