“Screeching like a guinea-hen!” thought Maggie. “What Victor can see in her—”
Whatever it was he saw, Cousin Sam saw it too. Old and tired and silly, trying to act as young as the others, you could see his heart in his eyes as he looked at Daisy.
And just before supper, going out on the river porch to get the cream, where she had put it to keep it safe from Kitty, there were Daisy and Victor smoking together!
“I guess you think it’s real wicked for this little girl to be smoking a cigarette,” said Daisy, and Maggie answered, “No,” and stalked into the house, bursting to add, “Not wicked, just cheap and silly!” She pretended not to hear Victor call after her, “Cousin Daisy certainly has made the party a success, hasn’t she, Maggie?”
She had been afraid they would notice, when she went out to get the supper ready, and had thought what to answer if anyone asked, “Where are you going?” She would either say “To China!” or “Heigho for meddlers!” But no one noticed. “Well, I didn’t want them to,” she said, putting the croquettes into the oven and giving the door a good hard slam.
She had meant what she said when she told Aunt Priscilla that she wished Victor would fall in love with someone, but she certainly hadn’t been thinking of anyone like Daisy Blow.
XXV
“You mark my words, Lily—Wadsworth Robinson is going to make May an offer, and what’s more, I believe she’s going to take him. Look—he’s really not bad looking—not handsome, but kind of nice—”
Lily joined Maggie in gazing out from behind a pinch back of bedroom window curtain. Mr. Robinson propped his bicycle against a tree, took off the clips that held his white tennis trousers tight around his ankles, straightened a small white hat above his serious red-brown face, and took a box from the net hammock on his handlebars. “Chocolates,” said Lily.
May had been watching, too, with a feeling of fingers closing around her heart, squeezing it lightly. Her knees trembled and she felt suddenly weak, and had to sit down on her bed a moment—had to fling herself down with her face in the pillow.
She knew that he loved her, that he was going to ask her to marry him. And she was going to marry him. She shook with fascinated terror, dark excitement. This way, alone, with her face pressed into the pillow, she loved him.
She got up, patted a dust of powder over her flaming cheeks, and ran downstairs, and her sisters heard her company voice cry:
“Why, I didn’t know you were here! Isn’t it a heavenly day for tennis? Victor’s gone over for Daisy, they’ll be here soon, I guess.”
If only he had gone on from the place he had reached in her dream! Already she had taken him past the need of words. But he was himself, so much less real to her than her idea of him.
“It certainly is a beautiful day! I’m looking forward to our game of tennis very much.”
“Very much”! Oh, oh, how tepid! And yet there was nothing tepid in the way he was looking at her. Wings fluttered in her breast, and her voice changed from company voice to a light shaken chime of bells, the secret of life escaped through it, though the words it was crying were only:
“Oh, for me? Oh, you shouldn’t have—chocolates!”
“And bonbons,” he pointed out.
Victor and Daisy played against May and Mr. Robinson. May felt like a soap bubble, bounding, gleaming, bright color swirling into bright color. Mr. Robinson couldn’t take his eyes off her, he never even looked at Daisy, except abstractedly, as if she were a cow or a tree. His faithful dog eyes followed May, you could almost see a loving tail wagging.
“Stay to supper,” Maggie invited him and Daisy. She didn’t want Daisy, but she couldn’t ask one and not the other.
“Oh, my dear! Rapture and bliss if there was any way of letting my old Sambo know—he’s feeling kind of mean, and most likely he’s in bed and asleep; still, I guess I ought to send word. Our telephone would certainly be a lot more useful if any other of the folks out here had one.”
“I’ll go over on my bicycle,” suggested Mr. Robinson in his deep serious voice, “And tell Mother on the way that I won’t be home either.”
“Oh, would you? Angel of light and mercy! I’ll love you for life!”
“There’s a moon tonight,” said Mr. Robinson in a voice vibrating with meaning. He only meant May to hear, but Daisy heard too, and burst into screams of laughter as he pedalled out of the drive, ringing his bicycle bell to the empty road.
“ ‘There’s a moon tonight,’ ” she mimicked, deep in her throat. “Ow! I shall die! May, he’s going to propose! Wouldn’t you know he’s the kind of fellow wouldn’t think a proposal was legal unless it was by moonlight?”
“Oh, don’t—!” cried Maggie.
“Ow! Ow! My side! Where did he get that hat?”
“ ‘Where did you get that hat?’ ” sang Victor, and he picked up a little white paper bonbon case from Mr. Robinson’s box, put it on his head, seized Lily’s palm leaf fan, and gave an imitation of him playing tennis that made them laugh until they cried.
“Oh! Oh!” May was nearly sobbing. “Did you ever see anything so much too small as it was, and so white, and so new! If it hadn’t been so new! But it might just as well have had ‘Bought for the occasion’ printed all over it in large black letters—oh! I shall never be able to keep a straight face when I look at him again—”
And she laughed and laughed, with the tears rolling down
