Part 47

“And I have waited long enough,” he declared. “Mother Kilgour, you must convince Kate that we are to be married within a week.”

And he gave the mother a look which made her turn pale and twist her ringed fingers nervously.

“Kate, what is the use?” she pleaded. “You are acting like a child. You love Richard. You know you love him. You tell me often that you love him! Richard is such a dear boy!” She said this fawningly, with evident intent to placate the sullen young man. Her tone, her air suggested the nervous embarrassment of a debtor who seeks to put off a creditor with flattery and fresh promises. “Now be a darling child and say that we'll have the wedding next week without any fuss or feathers.”

“I am not ready to get married, and I simply will not be married just yet,” declared the girl, her red lips compressed.

“You don't love me!” complained Dodd.

“I like you, Richard,” admitted the girl, frankly, without any coquettishness. “I have never cared for anybody else. You have been good to me, except when you were foolish.”

“Foolishness--that's what she calls being so much in love with her that I can't keep my hands off her,” said Dodd to the mother. “Mother Kilgour, you haven't talked to Kate as you should. She doesn't know what love is.”

“Oh, I'll find out all about it, and then we'll be married--when I'm ready to become a wife,” said the girl, with an indulgent smile. “All at once I'll wake up, just as you have been begging me to do, and then we'll simply run away and be married and live happily for ever after.”

“I don't like this stalling,” growled Dodd, brutally.

“I'll leave you two children together,” said the mother. “I'm sure you'll come to an understanding.” She went away, showing relief.

“Sit down here on the divan with me, sweetheart,” pleaded the young man.

But without removing her hat she went to the piano and began to play.

“Please come!” he entreated.

She smiled at him over her shoulder and made a pretty moue.

Muttering an oath of passion he leaped up, hurried across the room, and began to kiss her fiercely.

He crushed back with his lips all her protests; standing over her, he held her upon the piano-bench until by main strength and with all the force of her resentment she tore away from him.

“And now you are going to blame me because I can't help it,” he gasped.

“I don't in the least understand why normal persons can find any pleasure in that kind of folly.”

“Is your idea of loving anybody rubbing noses like Eskimos?”

“I'd endure that kind of loving in preference to that kind of kissing, Richard. That isn't love which you're offering--not the kind of love I want. I am going out for my walk--you filched it from me. No, I'm going alone. Go and talk with mamma, if you like.”

She escaped the clutch he made and hurried out and to the elevator.

Flushed and angry, Dodd made his way to an inner room where Mrs. Kilgour was reading a novel, sunning herself with feline indolence. She put the book by with evident regret.

“Oh, Kate, has so much poise!” she lamented, breaking in on the young man's complaints. “She is so like her father. No one except myself could do anything with him at all. Sometime it was very hard for me! He would set his mind and his teeth! But I always won in the end.”

“Well, go ahead and win now,” commanded the surly lover. “You are simply letting this thing run along.”

“I know Kate's nature, Richard. It's only a matter of the right time.”

He sat down at her feet on the end of the couch.

“The time is here--now!” he told her. “I insist that you make Kate understand. I have been patient and reasonable for a year. You have promised me that you will bring everything around all right. Why don't you do it?”

“But delivering a daughter into marriage isn't like delivering groceries on order!” Her tone showed a bit of impatience. “Be reasonable!”