第79章 DEAR ANNIE(11)

"No, thank you," said Tom Reed, briskly. "Iwill drop in another evening. Think I must go home now. I have some important letters. Good night, all."Annie made a soft rush to the gate, crouching low that her sisters might not see her. They flocked into the house with irascible murmurings, like scold-ing birds, while Annie stole across the grass, which had begun to glisten with silver wheels of dew. She held her skirts closely wrapped around her, and stepped through a gap in the shrubs beside the walk, then sped swiftly to the gate. She reached it just as Tom Reed was passing with a quick stride.

"Tom," said Annie, and the young man stopped short.

He looked in her direction, but she stood close to a great snowball-bush, and her dress was green muslin, and he did not see her. Thinking that he had been mistaken, he started on, when she called again, and this time she stepped apart from the bush and her voice sounded clear as a flute.

"Tom," she said. "Stop a minute, please."Tom stopped and came close to her. In the dim light she could see that his face was all aglow, like a child's, with delight and surprise.

"Is that you, Annie?" he said.

"Yes. I want to speak to you, please."

"I have been here before, and I rang the bell three times. Then you were out, although your sisters thought not.""No, I was in the house."

"You did not hear the bell?"

"Yes, I heard it every time."

"Then why --?"

"Come into the house with me and I will tell you;at least I will tell you all I can."

Annie led the way and the young man followed.

He stood in the dark entry while Annie lit the parlor lamp. The room was on the farther side of the house from the parsonage.

"Come in and sit down," said Annie. Then the young man stepped into a room which was pretty in spite of itself. There was an old Brussels carpet with an enormous rose pattern. The haircloth fur-niture gave out gleams like black diamonds under the light of the lamp. In a corner stood a what-not piled with branches of white coral and shells. Annie's grandfather had been a sea-captain, and many of his spoils were in the house. Possibly Annie's own occupation of it was due to an adventurous strain inherited from him. Perhaps the same impulse which led him to voyage to foreign shores had led her to voyage across a green yard to the next house.

Tom Reed sat down on the sofa. Annie sat in a rocking-chair near by. At her side was a Chinese teapoy, a nest of lacquer tables, and on it stood a small, squat idol. Annie's grandmother had been taken to task by her son-in-law, the Reverend Silas, for harboring a heathen idol, but she had only laughed, "Guess as long as I don't keep heathen to bow down before him, he can't do much harm," she had said.

Now the grotesque face of the thing seemed to stare at the two Occidental lovers with the strange, calm sarcasm of the Orient, but they had no eyes or thought for it.

"Why didn't you come to the door if you heard the bell ring?" asked Tom Reed, gazing at Annie, slender as a blade of grass in her clinging green gown.

"Because I was not able to break my will then.

I had to break it to go out in the yard and ask you to come in, but when the bell rang I hadn't got to the point where I could break it.""What on earth do you mean, Annie?"

Annie laughed. "I don't wonder you ask," she said, "and the worst of it is I can't half answer you.

I wonder how much, or rather how little explanation will content you?"Tom Reed gazed at her with the eyes of a man who might love a woman and have infinite patience with her, relegating his lack of understanding of her woman's nature to the background, as a thing of no consequence.

"Mighty little will do for me," he said, "mighty little, Annie dear, if you will only tell a fellow you love him."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 shoe-strings, 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.