Volume V Part 22 (1/2)
_Now_ what should he say? With any ordinary girl he could have found the answer, but this one had him floored.
”But you look ever so much nicer when you are awake,” she further informed him, with a clear-eyed straightforwardness that was worse than disconcerting. In desperation he answered, with her own frankness, that she was nice looking herself. He meant it, too.
”I'm so glad you think so,” she contentedly sighed. ”I just knew we should like each other as soon as I saw you lying there asleep.”
It was he who blushed, not the girl.
She partly raised up to recapture her hazel branch, and when she sat down again her shoulder remained lightly touching his arm. An electric thrill ran through him and tingled out at his fingertips, but he never moved a muscle. She looked up at him in peaceful happiness and he somehow felt very mean and unworthy. Her eyes made him uncomfortable.
The whole trouble was that she was so honest--had never been taught to conceal her thoughts by the thousand and one spoken and unspoken lies of ordinary social intercourse. She was neither timid nor bold, but merely natural, with never a suspicion that conventionality demanded a man and a maid to leave a mutual liking unconfessed. It was rather rough on the young man. He was not used to having the truth fly around in such reckless fas.h.i.+on in his conversations with girls, and it bothered him.
”I'm not a bit afraid of you,” she presently told him. ”I knew all the time that Aunt Mattie was wrong. She told me that all men were dreadful, and that the first thing they did was to--to kiss a girl they liked.”
”She knows nothing about it,” he replied rather crossly. For some unaccountable reason he was angry with himself and with her.
”Indeed, she doesn't,” she agreed, eying him thoughtfully. Presently she added: ”I do not believe, though, that I should have minded it so much if she had been right.”
Shade of Plato! He looked down at the tempting curve of her red lips.
They were round and full and soft as the petals of a half-blown rosebud, warm and tender and sweet, with just the least trace of puckering to indicate how they could meet the pressure of other lips. He felt his heart come pounding up into the region of his Adam's apple, and he trembled as he had not done since his first attack of puppy love at the age of fourteen. His breath came and went with a painful flutter but he made no movement. If it had been any sort of a girl under the sun, especially if so attractive as this one, she would have been kissed until she gasped for breath; but he just couldn't do it. However, if she went so far as to _ask_ him to kiss her, _by George_! he didn't see how he was to get out of it!
”I should really like to kiss you,” he admitted with a martyr-like sigh and a further echo of her own frankness, ”but I shan't. Under the circ.u.mstances it would not be right.”
He reflected, grinning, that mother would be proud if she could see him now, then he thought, grinning harder, of the boys at the club. If _they_ only knew!
”There, didn't I say so!” she triumphantly exclaimed. ”I told Aunt Matilda that there certainly must be _some_ good men in the world!”
Good! He winced as certain memories of his careless youth began to do cake-walks up and down his conscience. Then he changed the subject.
She snuggled up closely to him, by and by, confidingly and unsuspicious, and just talked and talked and talked. It was very pleasant to have her there at his side, babbling innocently away in that sweet, musical voice. How pretty she was, how artless and trusting, how honest and how heart-whole! It came to him that his family and friends had for a long time been telling him that he ought to get married, and he began to see that they were right.
How delightful it would be to stay on forever in this enchanted grove with her. He presently found himself fervently saying it, though he had not intended such words to pa.s.s his lips. She took the wish as a matter of course. She had confidently expected him to feel that way about it, and, if he felt that way, to say so.
”Adnah Eggleson!”
They jumped like juvenile jam-thieves caught red-handed.
Aunt Sarah and Aunt Ann and Aunt Matilda rigidly confronted them, having stolen upon them unseen, unheard, unthought of, and they stood now in grim horror, merciless and implacable. They advanced in a swooping body, after one moment of agonizing suspense, and s.n.a.t.c.hed Adnah into their midst, glaring three kinds of loathing scorn upon the interloping serpent.
”Has this person _kissed_ you, or attempted to do so?” hissed Aunt Sarah.
”Not yet,” meekly answered poor Adnah.
”I a.s.sure you ladies--,” began the serpent, but Aunt Sarah cut him short.
”Silence, sir!” she commanded. ”We wish no explanations from you, whatsoever.”
Thus crus.h.i.+ng him, the little company wheeled and marched away, bearing Adnah an unwilling and impenitent captive, two of them ingeniously keeping behind her so that she should have no opportunity of even exchanging a backward glance with the serpent.
Left to himself the serpent moodily kicked holes in the turf. He had an intense desire to do something violent--to smash something, no matter what. He was furious with the trio of aunts. It was a shame, he told himself, to bury alive a beautiful and n.o.ble young woman like that, through a warped and mistaken notion of the world. What right had they to condemn a sweet and affectionate creature such as she to a starved and morbid spinsterhood? It was his duty to rescue her from the colorless fate that hung over her, and he would do his duty. He was unconsciously flexing his biceps as he said it.
Would he? How? Should he get out a search warrant or a writ of replevin?