Part 68

Annie looked at him, and her thin, sweet face seemed to have a luminous quality, like a crescent moon. Her look was enough.

“Then you do?” said Tom Reed.

“You have never needed to ask,” said Annie. “You knew.”

“I haven't been so sure as you think,” said Tom. “Suppose you come over here and sit beside me. You look miles away.”

Annie laughed and blushed, but she obeyed. She sat beside Tom and let him put his arm around her. She sat up straight, by force of her instinctive maidenliness, but she kissed him back when he kissed her.

“I haven't been so sure,” repeated Tom. “Annie darling, why have I been unable to see more of you? I have fairly haunted your house, and seen the whole lot of your sisters, especially Imogen, but somehow or other you have been as slippery as an eel. I have always asked for you, but you were always out or busy.”

“I have been very busy,” said Annie, evasively. She loved this young man with all her heart, but she had an enduring loyalty to her own flesh and blood.

Tom was very literal. “Say, Annie,” he blurted out, “I begin to think you have had to do most of the work over there. Now, haven't you? Own up.”

Annie laughed sweetly. She was so happy that no sense of injury could possibly rankle within her. “Oh, well,” she said, lightly. “Perhaps. I don't know. I guess housekeeping comes rather easier to me than to the others. I like it, you know, and work is always easier when one likes it. The other girls don't take to it so naturally, and they get very tired, and it has seemed often that I was the one who could hurry the work through and not mind.”

“I wonder if you will stick up for me the way you do for your sisters when you are my wife?” said Tom, with a burst of love and admiration. Then he added: “Of course you are going to be my wife, Annie? You know what this means?”

“If you think I will make you as good a wife as you can find,” said Annie.

“As good a wife! Annie, do you really know what you are?”

“Just an ordinary girl, with no special talent for anything.”

“You are the most wonderful girl that ever walked the earth,” exclaimed Tom. “And as for talent, you have the best talent in the whole world; you can love people who are not worthy to tie your shoestrings, and think you are looking up when in reality you are looking down. That is what I call the best talent in the whole world for a woman.” Tom Reed was becoming almost subtle.

Annie only laughed happily again. “Well, you will have to wait and find out,” said she.

“I suppose,” said Tom, “that you came over here because you were tired out, this hot weather. I think you were sensible, but I don't think you ought to be here alone.”

“I am not alone,” replied Annie. “I have poor little Effie Hempstead with me.”

“That deaf-and-dumb child? I should think this heathen god would be about as much company.”

“Why, Tom, she is human, if she is deaf and dumb.”

Tom eyed her shrewdly. “What did you mean when you said you had broken your will?” he inquired.

“My will not to speak for a while,” said Annie, faintly.

“Not to speak--to any one?”

Annie nodded.

“Then you have broken your resolution by speaking to me?”

Annie nodded again.

“But why shouldn't you speak? I don't understand.”

“I wondered how little I could say, and have you satisfied,” Annie replied, sadly.

Tom tightened his arm around her. “You precious little soul,” he said. “I am satisfied. I know you have some good reason for not wanting to speak, but I am plaguey glad you spoke to me, for I should have been pretty well cast down if you hadn't, and to-morrow I have to go away.”