Mrs. Duds Sister | Page 7

so. At dinner he secretly tried to rouse in himself the
same desire to stroke the gleaming silver fleece, high-dressed, puffed,
and ornamented with jet, of the woman opposite him, whose hair,
somewhat prematurely turned snowy, had won her a great vogue
among her friends. But he never succeeded. She was absolutely too
effective. She turned the simplest gathering to a fancy-dress ball, he
decided.
He had supposed that it was the quaint privacy of their acquaintance
that charmed him particularly--the feeling of an almost double
existence; but when Mrs. Dud, who, he afterwards reflected, was of
course omniscient, restrained herself no longer, and thanked him with a

pretty sincerity for his delicate and appreciated courtesy, intimating
charmingly that she realized the personal motive, a veil suddenly
dropped. He gasped, shook himself, colored a little, and met her eye.
"I'm afraid I'm not so kind as you think," he said, a little awkwardly.
"I've been an old fool, I see. Do you think--is that the way she looks at
it?"
"Mary?" said Mrs. Dud, wonderingly. "Yes, I suppose so. Why?"
The naïve egotism of the answer only threw a softer light on the picture
that had grown to fill his thoughts. He smiled inscrutably.
"Because in that case it is due to her to undeceive her," he said. "I am
glad I have entertained her. I should like to have the opportunity to do
so indefinitely. Do you think there's a chance for me?"
"What on earth do you mean?" asked his hostess, in unassumed
stupefaction.
"I mean, do you think she would marry me?" Varian brought out
plumply. "Is there--was there ever anybody else?"
For one instant Mrs. Dud lost her poise; in her eyes he almost saw more
than she meant; the sheer, flat blow of it levelled her for a breath to the
plane of other and ordinary women. But even as he thought it, it was
gone. She put out her hand; she smiled; she shook her finger at him.
"I think, my friend, she would be a fool not to marry you," she
answered him, clear-eyed; "and there was never," her tone was too
sweet, he thought, to carry but one meaning--pleasure for him, "there
was never anybody else!"
Varian walked straight to the garden. She was training a fiery wall of
nasturtiums with firm white fingers. It occurred to him that he was
ready to give up the tally-ho, and the Berkshires, and the scramble of
pretty girls for the place beside him, to sit quietly and watch her among
her flowers.

"I'm getting old--old!" he said to himself, but he said it with a smile.
For he knew that no boy's heart ever beat more swiftly, no boy's tongue
ever sought more excitedly to find the right words. But when he faced
her a little doubt chilled him: she was so calm and complete, in her
sunny, busy, balanced life, that he feared to disturb that sweet placidity.
With an undercurrent of fear, a sudden realization that he had no more
the blessed egotism of youth to drive him on, he walked beside her,
outwardly content, at heart a little solitary. At some light question he
turned and faced her.
"You could not have all the greenhouses, but there could be plenty of
flowers," he said pleadingly.
"Flowers? Where?" she asked.
"Wherever we lived," he answered. "And oh, Mary, I think we could be
happy together! Don't say no!" as she shrank a little. "Don't, Mary, for
heaven's sake! I care too much--I care terribly. I am too old a man to
care so much and--lose.... There, there, my dear girl, never mind. I can
bear it, of course. Only I didn't know I'd planned it all out so, and--But
never mind. I was going to have a bay-window full of--"
He turned away from her for a moment. But her hand was on his arm.
"We can plan it out together," she said.
He knew how she would blush; he had even dared to think how directly
her clear gray eyes would meet his--her sky-ness was never
hesitation--but he had not dreamed how soft her hair could be.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Dud's Sister, by Josephine
Daskam
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SISTER ***

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