Part 27

"Yes, he was always a beautiful dresser. He makes it what you might call 'is hobby."

"Of course Mr. Robinson wants you to marry him?"

"Yes. Leastways he says so."

"And I suppose your uncle and aunt want you to marry him?"

"They were more for it than I was."

"Rose--he's got a bigger income than I have."

"He never told me what his income is."

"But you know?"

"I dare say Uncle does."

"Better dressed--decidedly more handsome----"

"Well--he is that."

"A bigger income. Rose, do you want Mr. Robinson to be found dead in his shop--horribly dead--among the collars and the handkerchiefs--spoiling them, and--not--looking--handsome--any more?"

"Oh, Mr. Tanqueray!"

"Then don't talk about him."

He turned his face to hers. She put up her hands and drew his head down into the hollow of her breasts that were warm with the sun on them.

"Rose," he said, "if you stroke my hair too much it'll come off, like Joey's. Would you love me if my hair came off?"

She kissed his hair.

"When did you begin to love me, Rose?"

"I don't know. I think it must have been when you were ill."

"I see. When I was bowled over on my back and couldn't struggle. What made you love me?"

She was silent a long time, smiling softly to herself.

"I think it was because--because--because you were so kind to Joey."

"So you thought I would be kind to you?"

"I didn't--I didn't think at all. I just----"

"So did I," said Tanqueray.

VII

It had been arranged that Rose was to be married from the house of her mistress, and that she was to remain there until her wedding-day. There were so many things to be seen to. There was the baby. You couldn't, Rose said, play fast and loose with him. Rose, at her own request, had come to take care of the baby for a month, and she was not going back on that, not if it was ever so. Then there were all the things that her mistress, Rose said, was going to learn her. So many things, things she was not to do, things she was not to say, things she was on no account to wear. Rose, buying her trousseau, was not to be trusted alone for a minute.

It had been put to Rose, very gently by her mistress, very gravely by her master, whether she would really be happy if she married this eccentric young gentleman with the band-box. Was it not possible that she might be happier with somebody rather less eccentric? And Rose replied that she knew her own mind; that she couldn't be happy at all with anybody else, and that, if she could, she'd rather be unhappy with Mr. Tanqueray, eccentricity, band-box and all. Whereas, if he was to be unhappy with her, now----But, when it came to that, they hadn't the heart to tell her that he might, and very probably would be.