"He sat there looking me through and through," she told May, "till I nearly run off to the side. He stared at me just like our cat stares at the canary in the window next door."
"It"s not a canary," May corrected. "It"s a goldfinch."
"Now don"t be silly, and shut up, you and your goldfinches. Who cares if it"s a parrot? You know what I mean. Tell me what I"m to do about Borneo Bill."
May began to laugh.
"Well, he is. He"s like the song."
On the next day Mr. Corin interviewed Jenny about the prospects of his friend"s suit.
"You know, Miss Raeburn, he"s very serious about it, is Zack. He"s accounted quite a rich man down west. "Tis his own farm freehold--and he"s asked Mr. Raeburn"s permission."
"Well, that wins it!" Jenny proclaimed. "Asked my father"s permission?
What for? What"s it got to do with him who I marry? Thanks, I marry who I please. What a liberty!"
Mr. Corin looked apologetic.
"I only told you that so as you shouldn"t think there was anything funny about it. I never saw a man so dead in earnest, and he"s a religious man, too."
"Well, I"m not," Jenny retorted. "I don"t see what religion"s got to do with marrying."
"You come to think of it, Miss Raeburn, it"s not such a bad offer. I don"t believe you could meet with a safer man than Zack. I suppose if he"s worth a dollar, he"s worth three hundred pounds a year, and that"s comfortable living in Cornwall."
"But he"s old enough to be my father," Jenny contended.
"He looks older than what he is," continued Mr. Corin plausibly.
"Actually he isn"t much more than thirty-five."
"Yes, then he woke up," scoffed Jenny.
"No, really he isn"t," Corin persisted. "But he"s been a big worker all his life. Thunder and sleet never troubled him. And, looking at it this way, you know the saying, ""Tis better to be an old man"s darling than a young man"s slave.""
"But I don"t like him--not in the way that I could marry him." Jenny had a terrible feeling of battered down defenses, of some inexorable force advancing against her.
"Yes; but you might grow to like him. It"s happened before now with maids. And look, he"s willing for "ee to have your sister to live with you, and that means providing for her. What "ud become of her if anything happened to you or your father?"
"She could go and live with my sister Edie or my brother."
"Yes; but we all know what that may mean, whereas if she comes to live with you, Zack will be so proud of her as if she were his very own sister."
Jenny was staggered by the pertinacity of this wooing and made a slip.
"Yes; but when does he want to marry me?"
The pleader was not slow to take hold of this.
"Then you"ll consider it, eh?"
"I never said so," Jenny replied in a quick attempt to retrieve her blunder.
"Well, he wants to marry you now at once."
"But I couldn"t. For one thing I couldn"t leave the theater all in a hurry. It would look so funny. Besides----"
"Well," Zack said, "Don"t worry the maid, William John, but leave her to find out her own mind and I"ll bide here along till she do know it."
Mr. Corin dwelt on the magnanimity of his friend and having, as he thought, made a skillful attack on Jenny"s prejudice, retired to let his arguments sink in. He had effected even more than he imagined by his cool statement of the proposal. Put forward by him, devoid of all pa.s.sion and eccentricity of language, it seemed a very business-like affair. Jenny began to think how such a step would solve the problem of taking a new house, of moving the furniture, of providing for May, of getting rid of her father, now daily more irritating on account of his besotted manner of life. All the girls at the theater were marrying. It was in the air. She was growing old. The time of romantic adventure was gone. The carnival was petering out in a gloomy ba.n.a.lity. Change was imminent in every direction. Why not make a clean sweep of the old life and, escaping to some strange new existence, create a fresh illusion of pleasure? What would her mother have said to this offer? Jenny could not help feeling she would have regarded it with very friendly eyes, would have urged strongly its acceptance. Why, she had even been anxious for Jenny to make a match with a baker; and here was a prosperous man, a religious man, a steady man, inviting her to be mistress almost of a country estate. She wished that Mr. Z. Trewh.e.l.la were not so willing to wait. It made him appear so sure, so inevitable. And the time for moving was getting very near. Change was in the air. Jenny thought she would sound May"s views on the future in case of sudden accident or any deliberate alteration of the present mode of life.
"Where would you live if I went away?" she asked.
"What do you mean?" said May, looking very much alarmed by the prospect, and turning sharply on her pillow.
"I mean who would you live with? Alfie or Edie?"
"Neither," May affirmed emphatically.
"Why not?"
"Because I wouldn"t."
This reply, however unsatisfactory it might have been to a logician, was to Jenny the powerfullest imaginable.
"But supposing I got married?" she went on.
"Well, couldn"t I live with you? No, I suppose I couldn"t," said May dejectedly. "I"m a lot of good, ain"t I? Yes, you grumble sometimes, but what about if you was like me?"
Jenny had always accepted May"s cheerfulness under physical disability so much as a matter of fact that a complaint from her came with a shock.
More than ever did the best course for May seem the right course for Jenny. She recalled how years ago her mother had intrusted May to her when a child. How much more sacred and binding was that trust now that she who imposed it was dead.
"Don"t get excited," said Jenny, petting her little sister. "Whatever I done or wherever I went, you should come along of me."
May, not to display emotion, said:
"Well, you needn"t go sticking your great knee in my back." But Jenny knew by the quickness with which she fell asleep that May was happy and secure.
"I"m going to have a rare old rout out this morning," Jenny announced when she woke up to the sight of an apparently infinitely wet day, a drench in a gray monotone of sky from dawn to nightfall.
About eleven o"clock the rout out began and gradually the acc.u.mulated minor rubbish of a quarter of a century was stacked in various heaps all over the house.
"What about mother"s things?" May inquired.
"I"m going to put them all away in a box. I"m going through them this afternoon," said Jenny.
"I"ve promised to go out and see some friends of mine this afternoon,"
said May. "So I"ll leave them to you because they aren"t tiring."
"All right, dear."