T. Tembarom Part 17

"I MUST." She put her last tight roll into the trunk and tried to shut the lid. "Please lock this for me."

He locked it, and then she seated herself on the top of it, though it was rather high for her, and her small feet dangled. Her eyes looked large and moist like a baby's, and she took out a handkerchief and lightly touched them.

"You've made me want to cry a bit," she said, "but I'm not going to."

"Are you going to tell me you don't want me?" he asked, with anxious eyes.

"No, I'm not."

"G.o.d bless you!" He was going to make a dash at her again, but pulled himself up because he must. "No, by jings!" he said. "I'm not going to till you let me."

"You see, it's true your head's not like mine," she said reasonably.

"Men's heads are mostly not like women's. They're men, of course, and they're superior to women, but they're what I'd call more fluttery- like. Women must remind them of things."

"What--what kind of things?"

"This kind. You see, Grandmother lives near Temple Barholm, and I know what it's like, and you don't. And I've seen what seventy thousand pounds a year means, and you haven't. And you've got to go and find out for yourself."

"What's the matter with you coming along to help me?"

"I shouldn't help you; that's it. I should hold you back. I'm nothing but Ann Hutchinson, and I talk Manchester-- and I drop my h's."

"I love to hear you drop your little h's all over the place," he burst forth impetuously. "I love it."

She shook her head.

"The girls that go to garden-parties at Temple Barholm look like those in the `Ladies' Pictorial', and they've got names and t.i.tles same as those in novels."

He answered her in genuine anguish. He had never made any mistake about her character, and she was beginning to make him feel afraid of her in the midst of his adoration.

"What do I want with a girl out of a magazine?" he cried. "Where should I hang her up?"

She was not unfeeling, but unshaken and she went on:

"I should look like a housemaid among them. How would you feel with a wife of that sort, when the other sort was about?"

"I should feel like a king, that's what I should feel like," he replied indignantly.

"I shouldn't feel like a queen. I should feel MISERABLE."

She sat with her little feet dangling, and her hands folded in her lap. Her infantile blue eyes held him as the Ancient Mariner had been held. He could not get away from the clear directness of them. He did not want to exactly, but she frightened him more and more.

"I should be ashamed," she proceeded. "I should feel as if I had taken an advantage. What you've got to do is to find out something no one else can find out for you, Mr. Temple Barholm."

"How can I find it out without you? It was you who put me on to the wedding-cake; you can put me on to other things."

"Because I've lived in the place," she answered unswervingly. "I know how funny it is for any one to think of me being Mrs. Temple Barholm.

You don't."

"You bet I don't," he answered; "but I'll tell you what I do know, and that's how funny it is that I should be Mr. Temple Barholm. I've got on to that all right, all right. Have you?"

She looked at him with a reflection that said much. She took him in with a judicial summing up of which it must be owned an added respect was part. She had always believed he had more sense than most young men, and now she knew it.

"When a person's clever enough to see things for himself, he's generally clever enough to manage them," she replied.

He knelt down beside the trunk and took both her hands in his. He held them fast and rather hard.

"Are you throwing me down for good, Little Ann?" he said. "If you are, I can't stand it, I won't stand it."

"If you care about me like that, you'll do what I tell you," she interrupted, and she slipped down from the top of her trunk. "I know what Mother would say. She'd say, 'Ann, you give that young man a chance.' And I'm going to give you one. I've said all I'm going to, Mr. Temple Barholm."

He took both her elbows and looked at her closely, feeling a somewhat awed conviction.

" I - believe - you have," he said.

And here the sound of Mr. Hutchinson's loud and stertorous breathing ceased, and he waked up, and came to the door to find out what Ann was doing.

"What are you two talking about?" he asked. "People think when they whisper it's not going to disturb anybody, but it's worse than shouting in a man's ear."

Tembarom walked into the room.

"I've been asking Little Ann to marry me," he announced, "and she won't."

He sat down in a chair helplessly, and let his head fall into his hands.

"Eh!" exclaimed Hutchinson. He turned and looked at Ann disturbedly.

"I thought a bit ago tha didn't deny but what tha'd took to him?"

"I didn't, Father," she answered. "I don't change my mind that quick.

I - would have been willing to say 'Yes' when you wouldn't have been willing to let me. I didn't know he was Mr. Temple Barholm then."

Hutchinson rubbed the back of his head, reddening and rather bristling.

"Dost tha think th' Temple Barholms would look down on thee?"

"I should look down on myself if I took him up at his first words, when he's all upset with excitement, and hasn't had time to find out what things mean. I'm--well, I 'm too fond of him, Father."

Hutchinson gave her a long, steady look.

"You are? " he said.

"Yes, I am."

Tembarom lifted his head, and looked at her, too.

"Are you?" he asked.

She put her hands behind her back, and returned his look with the calm of ages.