“Oh, no! But they did; they were always talking about it.”
“You never told me that.”
“I—I didn’t like to. Anna, shall I have to call him Henry now?”
“Yes, of course. When we’re married he will be your brother-in-law.”
“Shall you be married soon, Anna?”
“Not for a very long time.”
“When you are—shall I keep house alone? I can, you know—I shall never dare to call him Henry. But he’s awfully nice; isn’t he, Anna? Yes, when you are married, I shall keep house here, but I shall come to see you every day. Father will have to let me do that. Does father know you’re engaged?”
“Not yet. And you mustn’t say anything. Henry is coming for supper. And then father will be told.”
“Did he kiss you, Anna?”
“Who—father?”
“No, silly! Henry, of course—I mean when he’d asked you?”
“I think you are asking all the questions. Suppose I ask you some now. How have you managed with father? Has he been nice?”
“Some days—yes,” said Agnes, after thinking a moment. “We have had some new cups and saucers up from Mr. Mynors works. And father has swept the kitchen chimney. And, oh Anna! I asked him today if I’d kept house well, and he said ‘Pretty well,’ and he gave me a penny. Look! It’s the first money I’ve ever had, you know. I wanted you at nights, Anna—and all the time, too. I’ve been frightfully busy. I cleaned silvers all afternoon. Anna, I have tried—And I’ve got some tea for you. I’ll go down and make it. Now you mustn’t come into the kitchen. I’ll bring it to you in the parlour.”
“I had my tea at Crewe,” Anna was about to say, but refrained, in due course drinking the cup prepared by Agnes. She felt passionately sorry for Agnes, too young to feel the shadow which overhung her future. Anna would marry into freedom, but Agnes would remain the serf. Would Agnes marry? Could she? Would her father allow it? Anna had noticed that in families the youngest, petted in childhood, was often sacrificed in maturity. It was the last maid who must keep her maidenhood, and, vicariously filial, pay out of her own life the debt of all the rest.
“Mr. Mynors is coming up for supper tonight. He wants to see you;” Anna said to her father, as calmly as she could. The miser grunted. But at eight o’clock, the hour immutably fixed for supper, Henry had not arrived. The meal proceeded, of course, without him. To Anna his absence was unaccountable and disturbing, for none could be more punctilious than he in the matter of appointments. She expected him every moment, but he did not appear. Agnes, filled full of the great secret confided to her, was more openly impatient than her sister. Neither of them could talk, and a heavy silence fell upon the family group, a silence which her father, on that particular evening of Anna’s return, resented.
“You dunna’ tell us much,” he remarked, when the supper was finished.
She felt that the complaint was a just one. Even before supper, when nothing had occurred to preoccupy her, she had spoken little. There had seemed so much to tell—at Port Erin, and now there seemed nothing to tell. She ventured into a flaccid, perfunctory account of Beatrice’s illness, of the fishing, of the unfinished houses which had caught the fancy of Mr. Sutton; she said the sea had been smooth, that they had had something to eat at Liverpool, that the train for Crewe was very prompt; and then she could think of no more. Silence fell again. The supper-things were cleared away and washed up. At a quarter-past nine, Agnes, vainly begging permission to stay up in order to see Mr. Mynors, was sent to bed, only partially comforted by a clothes-brush, long desired, which Anna had brought for her as a present from the Isle of Man.
“Shall you tell father yourself, now Henry hasn’t come?” the child asked Anna, who had gone upstairs to unpack her box.
“Yes,” said Anna, briefly.
“I wonder what he’ll say,” Agnes reflected, with that habit, always annoying to Anna, of meeting trouble halfway.
At a quarter to ten Anna ceased to expect Mynors, and finally braced herself to the ordeal of a solemn interview with her father, well knowing that she dared not leave him any longer in ignorance of her engagement. Already the old man was locking and bolting the door; he had wound up the kitchen clock. When he came back to the parlour to extinguish the gas she was standing by the mantelpiece.
“Father,” she began, “I’ve something I must tell you.”
“Eh, what’s that ye say?” his hand was on the gas-tap. He dropped it, examining her face curiously.
“Mr. Mynors has asked me to marry him; he asked me last night. We settled he should come up tonight to see you—I can’t think why he hasn’t. It must be something very unexpected and important, or he’d have come.” She trembled, her heart beat violently; but the words were out, and she thanked God.
“Asked ye to marry him, did he?” The miser gazed at her quizzically out of his small blue eyes.
“Yes, father.”
“And what didst say?”
“I said I would.”
“Oh! Thou saidst thou wouldst! I reckon it was for thatten as thou must go gadding off to seaside, eh?”
“Father, I never dreamt of such a thing when Suttons asked me to go. I do wish Henry”—the cost of that Christian name!—“had come. He quite meant to come tonight.” She could not help insisting on the propriety of Henry’s intentions.
“Then I am for be consulted, eh?”
“Of course, father.”
“Ye’ve soon made it up, between ye.”
His tone was, at the best, brusque; but she breathed more easily, divining instantly from his manner that he meant to offer no violent objection to the engagement. She knew that only tact was needed now. The miser had, indeed, foreseen the possibility of this marriage for months past, and had long since decided
