Part 56 (1/2)
He saw her eyes were welling over with tears.
”You were crying again last night,” he said sharply.
”Yessir.”
”But what did you have to cry about now? Aren't you the luckiest girl in the world?”
”Yessir.”
As she spoke a flood of sunlight poured suddenly into the room; the sun had broken through the clouds, the worn dollar had become a dazzling gold-piece. The canary stirred in its cage.
”Then what were you crying about?”
”I didn't want to be lucky.”
”You silly girl--I have no patience with you. And why didn't you want to see me again?”
”Please, Mr. Lancelot, I knew you wouldn't like it.”
”Whatever put that into your head?”
”I knew it, sir,” said Mary Ann, firmly. ”It came to me when I was crying. I was thinking of all sorts of things--of my mother and our Sally, and the old pig that used to get so savage, and about the way the organ used to play in church, and then all at once somehow I knew it would be best for me to do what you told me--to buy my dress and go back with the vicar, and be a good girl, and not bother you, because you were so good to me, and it was wrong for me to worry you and make you miserable.”
”Tw-oo! Tw-oo!” It was the canary starting on a preliminary carol.
”So I thought it best,” she concluded tremulously, ”not to see you again.
It would only be two days, and after that it would be easier. I could always be thinking of you just the same, Mr. Lancelot, always. That wouldn't annoy you, sir, would it? Because you know, sir, you wouldn't know it.”
Lancelot was struggling to find a voice. ”But didn't you forget something you had to do, Mary Ann?” he said in hoa.r.s.e accents.
She raised her eyes swiftly a moment, then lowered them again.
”I don't know; I didn't mean to,” she said apologetically.
”Didn't you forget that I told you to come to me and get my answer to your question?”
”No, sir, I didn't forget. That was what I was thinking of all night.”
”About your asking me to marry you?”
”Yessir.”
”And my saying it was impossible?”
”Yessir, and I said, 'Why is it impossible?' and you said, 'Because--'
and then you left off; but please, Mr. Lancelot, I didn't want to know the answer this morning.”
”But I want to tell you. Why don't you want to know?”
”Because I found out for myself, Mr. Lancelot. That's what I found out when I was crying--but there was nothing to find out, sir. I knew it all along. It was silly of me to ask you--but you know I am silly sometimes, sir, like I was when my mother was dying. And that was why I made up my mind not to bother you any more, Mr. Lancelot, I knew you wouldn't like to tell me straight out.”