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Page 46
When he was settled in the chair and the orderly had gone she
brought an extra pillow to put behind him, and he dared the first
personality of their new relationship.
"What a little girl you are, after all!" he said. "Lying there in
the bed shaking at your frown, you were so formidable."
"I am not small," she said, straightening herself. She had always
hoped that her cap gave her height. "It is you who are so tall.
You--you are a giant!"
"A wicked giant, seeking whom I may devour and carrying off lovely
girls for dinner under pretence of marriage----" He stopped his
nonsense abruptly, having got so far, and both of them coloured.
Thrashing about desperately for something to break the wretched
silence, he seized on the one thing that in those days of his
convalescence was always pertinent--food. "Speaking of dinner," he
said hastily, "isn't it time for some buttermilk?"
She was quite calm when she came back--cool, even smiling; but
Billy Grant had not had the safety valve of action. As she placed
the glass on the table at his elbow he reached out and took her
hand.
"Can you ever forgive me?" he asked. Not an original speech; the
usual question of the marauding male, a query after the fact and too
late for anything but forgiveness.
"Forgive you? For not dying?"
She was pale; but no more subterfuge now, no more turning aside from
dangerous subjects. The matter was up before the house.
"For marrying you!" said Billy Grant, and upset the buttermilk. It
took a little time to wipe up the floor and to put a clean cover on
the stand, and after that to bring a fresh glass and place it on the
table. But these were merely parliamentary preliminaries while each
side got its forces in line.
"Do you hate me very much?" opened Billy Grant. This was, to change
the figure, a blow below the belt.
"Why should I hate you?" countered the other side.
"I should think you would. I forced the thing on you."
"I need not have done it."
"But being you, and always thinking about making some one else happy
and comfortable----"
"Oh, if only they don't find it out over there!" she burst out. "If
they do and I have to leave, with Jim----"
Here, realising that she was going to cry and not caring to screw up
her face before any one, she put her arms on the stand and buried
her face in them. Her stiff tulle cap almost touched Billy Grant's
arm.
Billy Grant had a shocked second.
"Jim?"
"My little brother," from the table.
Billy Grant drew a long breath of relief. For a moment he had
thought----
"I wonder--whether I dare to say something to you." Silence from the
table and presumably consent. "Isn't he--don't you think that--I
might be allowed to--to help Jim? It would help me to like myself
again. Just now I'm not standing very high with myself."
"Won't you tell me why you did it?" she said, suddenly sitting up,
her arms still out before her on the table. "Why did you coax so?
You said it was because of a little property you had, but--that
wasn't it--was it?"
"No."
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