Part 46 (1/2)

”A telegram!” exclaimed Cicely, but she did not look up at him.

”Yes,” said he; ”I want to telegraph to Miriam that you and I are engaged to be married. I want her to know it before she gets here. Shall I send it?”

She raised to him a face more brightly hued than any peach blossom--rich with the color of the ripe fruit. Ten minutes after this, two wood doves, sitting in a tree to the east of the lettuce bed, and looking westward, turned around on their twig and looked toward the east. They were sunny-minded little creatures, and did not like to be cast into the shade.

As they went out of the garden gate, Cicely said, ”You have always been a very independent person and accustomed to doing very much as you please, haven't you?”

”It has been something like that,” answered Ralph; ”but why?”

”Only this,” she said; ”would you begin already to chafe and rebel if I were to ask you not to send that telegram? It would be so much nicer to tell her after she gets back.”

”Chafe!” exclaimed Ralph, ”I should think not. I will do exactly as you wish.”

”You are awfully good,” said Cicely, ”but you must agree with me more prudently now that we are out here, and I will not tell mother until Miriam knows.”

A gray old chanticleer, who was leading his hens across the yard, stopped at this moment and looked at Ralph, but it is not certain that he sniffed.

Ralph knew very well when people, coming from Barport, should arrive in Thorbury, but his mind was so occupied that when he went to the barn, he forgot so many things he should have done at the house, and he ran backward and forward so often, and waited so long for an opportunity to say something he had just thought of, to somebody who did not happen to be ready to listen at the precise moment he wished to speak, that he had just stepped into the gig to go to the station for his sister, when Miriam arrived alone in the Bannister carriage. Not finding anybody at the station to meet her, they had sent her on.

Mrs. Drane was not the liveliest person at the dinner table, and she wondered much how Ralph and Cicely, who had been so extremely sober at breakfast time, should now be so hilarious. The arrival of Miriam seemed hardly reason enough for such intemperate gayety.

As for Miriam, she overflowed with delight. The ocean was grand, but Cobhurst was Cobhurst. ”There was nothing better about my trip than the opportunity it gave me of coming back to my home. I never did that before, you know, my children.”

This she said loftily from her seat at the head of the table. Dinner was late and lasted long, and Ralph had gone into the room on the lower floor, in which he kept his cigars, and which he called his office, when Miriam followed him. There was no unenc.u.mbered chair, and she seated herself on the edge of the table.

”Ralph,” said she, ”I want to say something to you, now, while it is fresh in my mind. I think we can sometimes understand our affairs better when we go away from them and are not mixed up in them. I have been thinking a great deal since I have been at Barport about our affairs here, not only as they are but as they may be, and most likely will be, and I have come to the conclusion that some of these days, Ralph, you will want to be married.”

”Do you mean me?” cried Ralph. ”You amaze me!”

”Oh, you are only a man, and you need not be amazed,” said his sister.

”This is the way I have been thinking of it: if you ever do want to get married, I hope you will not marry Dora Bannister. I used sometimes to think that that might be a good thing to do, though I changed my mind very often about it, but I do not think so, now, at all. Dora is an awfully nice girl in ever so many ways, but since I have been at Barport with her, I am positive that I do not want you to marry her.”

Ralph heaved a long sigh and put his hands in his pockets.

”Bless my soul!” he exclaimed, ”this is very discouraging; if I do not marry Dora, who is there that I can marry?”

”You goose,” said his sister, ”there is a girl here, under your very nose, ever so much nicer and more suitable for you than Dora. If you marry anybody, marry Cicely Drane. I have been thinking ever and ever so much about her and about you, and I made up my mind to speak to you of this as soon as I got home, so that you might have a chance to think about it before you should see Dora. Don't you remember what you used to tell me about the time when you were obliged to travel so much, and how, when you had a seat to yourself in a car, and a crowd of people were coming in, you used to make room for the first nice person you saw, because you knew you would have to have somebody sitting alongside of you, and you liked to choose for yourself? Now that is the way I feel about your getting married; if you marry Cicely Drane, I shall feel safe for the rest of my life.”

”Miriam!” exclaimed Ralph, ”you astonish me by the force of your statements. Wait here one moment,” and he ran into the hall through which he had seen Cicely pa.s.sing, and presently reappeared with her.

”Miss Drane,” said he, ”do you know that my sister thinks that I ought to marry you?”

In an instant Miriam had slipped from the table to the floor.

”Good gracious, Ralph!” she cried. ”What do you mean?”

”I am merely stating your advice,” he answered; ”and now, Miss Drane, how does it strike you?”

”Well,” said Cicely, demurely, ”if your sister really thinks we should marry, I suppose--I suppose we ought to do it.”