A Houseful of Girls | Page 8

for Dora to answer with drooping head, panting breast, and still less variety in her phrases, "Oh, no, no, Mr. Tom. Of course, I am very much obliged to you for thinking a great deal more of me than I deserve. But, indeed, indeed, it cannot be--you must give it up--this foolish fancy. It is a great pity that you have wasted time on such an absurd idea."
"Wasted time!" he repeated, with a little irony and a little pathos. "Well, I don't think it wasted even at this moment--and--and the idea does not seem so absurd to me; but I will not distress you by forcing my wishes upon you when you are so averse to them. You will allow me to continue your friend, Miss Dora?"
"Yes, oh yes," sighed Dora, who would have said anything, short of agreeing to marry him, to get him to go away, "if you like, after what has happened. I know I don't deserve your friendship; but, indeed, I could not help it, Mr. Robinson. I never guessed till lately that you thought of anything else, and then I would have stopped you, but I could not."
"Don't blame yourself," he said with a faint smile, "I am not blaming you. I shall count it a favour, an honour, if you will let me do anything for you that I can."
"Thank you very much," she murmured humbly.
"Then you will accept a little mark of my friendly feelings?" He took a small case from his waistcoat pocket, opened it, and drew from it a valuable ring, holding it out to her.
They were the most beautiful rubies and sapphires she had ever seen. But she would not touch it; she even put her hands behind her back in her confusion and dismay. "I could not; I ought not. It is far too costly a thing, I can see that at a glance. You must keep it; you will find some far fitter girl to give it to."
He shook his head, hesitated, and then took an old-fashioned little vinaigrette case, shaped like a tiny gold box, from the watch-chain at which he wore it. "Will you accept this from me, then? It was my mother's, and I should like you to have it."
"It's so good of you," the girl faltered. "I don't like to deprive you of what was your mother's, but if you care that I should have it----"
"I do care," he said.
That last little episode was entirely between themselves. When she quitted the room, not crying, but paler than before, she had the vinaigrette case clasped tightly in her hand, while nobody except Tom Robinson knew of the gift.
He let her go, and then he left the house. When he did so there was that in his face which caused Rose Millar to cry under her breath, "Come away. It is not fair to spy upon him. I'll never want to see anybody refused again." As for "little May," she burst into tears, though the principals had shed no tears.
"Hold your tongue, you little goose," remonstrated the disturbed Annie. "He may hear you. School-girls like you and Rose should not meddle in grown-up people's affairs."
"I thought I had left school after the Christmas holidays," said Rose, interrogating the world in an abstract fashion. She was herself again on the instant, carrying her funny little crumpled nose well in the air.
"It is dreadful," said May, with a half-suppressed sob, "and he was so good-natured. He promised only last week to get Rose and me a fox-terrier puppy."
"Oh, you selfish little creature! It is over the failure of the prospective puppy and not over the sorrows of the rejected man you are lamenting. Never mind, Maisie, I doubt if mother would have allowed us to keep the puppy. As for Mr. Tom Robinson, he is cut up just now, of course; but he will soon get over it. How long does it take a man to forget, Annie? Anyhow, presently he will be busily directing his attentions in another quarter, until the day may come, after he is successful and triumphant, well pleased with himself and his choice, when he will heartily thank Dora there for having administered to him the cold bath of a rejection, so nipping his first raw aspirations in the bud."
"No, no," insisted May; "you are so cynical, Rose, like everybody else now-a-days, and I hate it. He can never be glad to have lost Dora."
"Don't you agree with me, Annie?" Rose maintained her point.
"Really, you seem to be so well informed on the subject yourself--though I cannot think where you have got your experience, any more than your slang, unless at second-hand"--said Annie sarcastically, "that my opinion is of no importance."
"Now, don't be nasty and elder-sisterish," was Rose's quick rejoinder.
Though Dora shed no