Long this night he lay planning and thinking. Should he speak to Betty and tell her he loved her? Should he only teach her to think of him, not with the frank liking of her girlhood, so well expressed to him that very day, but with the warm feeling which would cause her cheeks to 88 redden when he spoke? Could he be sure of himself––to do this discreetly, or would he overstep the mark? He would wait and see what the next day would bring forth.
In the morning he discarded his crutch, as he had threatened, and walked out to the studio, using only a stout old blackthorn stick he had found one day when rummaging among a collection of odds and ends in the attic. He thought the stick was his father’s and wondered why so interesting a walking stick––or staff; it could hardly be called a cane, he thought, because it was so large and oddly shaped––should be hidden away there. Had his father seen it he would have recognized it instantly as one that had belonged to his brother-in-law, Larry Kildene, and it would have been cut up and used for lighting fires. But it had been many years since the Elder had laid eyes on that knobbed and sturdy stick, which Larry had treasured as a rare thing in the new world, and a fine antique specimen of a genuine blackthorn. It had belonged to his great-grandfather in Ireland, and no doubt had done its part in cracking crowns.
Betty, kneading bread at a table before the kitchen window, spied Peter Junior limping wearily up the walk without his crutch, and ran to him, dusting the flour from her hands as she came.
“Lean on me. I won’t get flour on your coat. What did you go without your crutch for? It’s very silly of you.”
He essayed a laugh, but it was a self-conscious one. “I’m not going to use a crutch all my lifetime; don’t you think it. I’m very well off without, and almost myself again. I don’t need to lean on you––but I will––just for fun.” He put his arm about her and drew her to him.
89
“Stop, Peter Junior. Don’t you see you’re getting flour all over your clothes?”
“I like flour on my clothes. It will do for stiffening.” He raised her hand and kissed her wrist where there was no flour.
“You’re not leaning on me. You’re just acting silly, and you can hardly walk, you’re so tired! Coming all this way without your crutch. I think you’re foolish.”
“If you say anything more about that crutch, I’ll throw away my cane too.” He dropped down on the piazza and drew her to the step beside him.
“I must finish kneading the bread; I can’t sit here. You rest in the rocker awhile before you go up to the studio. Father’s up there. He came home late last night after we were all in bed.” She returned to her work, and after a moment called to him through the open window. “There’s going to be a nutting party to-morrow, and we want you to go. We’re going out to Carter’s grove; we’ve got permission. Every one’s going.”
Peter Junior rubbed the moisture from his hair and shook his head. He must get nearer her, but it was always the same thing; just a happy game, with no touch of sentiment––no more, he thought gloomily, than if she were his sister.
“What are you all going there for?”
“Why, nuts, goosey; didn’t I say we were going nutting?”
“I don’t happen to want nuts.” No, he wanted her to urge and coax him to go for her sake, but what could he say?
He left his seat, took the side path around to the kitchen door, and drew up a chair to the end of the table where she 90 deftly manipulated the sweet-smelling dough, patting it, and pulling it, and turning it about until she was ready to put the shapely balls in the pans, holding them in her two firm little hands with a slight rolling motion as she slipped each loaf in its place. It had never occurred to Peter Junior that bread making was such an interesting process.
“Why do you fuss with it so? Why don’t you just dump it in the pan any old way? That’s the way I’d do.” But he loved to watch her pink-tipped fingers carefully shaping the loaves, nevertheless.
“Oh––because.”
“Good reason.”
“Well––the more you work it the better it is, just like everything else; and then––if you don’t make good-looking loaves, you’ll never have a handsome husband. Mother says so.” She tossed a stray lock from her eyes, and opening the oven door thrust in her arm. “My, but it’s hot! Why do you sit here in the heat? It’s a lot nicer on the porch in the rocker. Mother’s gone to town––and––”
“I’d rather sit here with you––thank you.” He spoke stiffly and waited. What could he say; what could he do next? She left him a moment and quickly returned with a cup of butter.
“You know––I’d stop and go out in the cool with you, Peter, but I must work this dough I have left into raised biscuit; and then I have to make a cake for to-morrow––and cookies––there’s something to do in this house, I tell you! How about to-morrow?”
“I don’t believe I’d better go. All the rest of the world will be there, and––”
91
“Only our little crowd. When I said everybody, you didn’t think I meant everybody in the whole world, did you? You know us all.”
“Do you want me to go? There’ll be enough others––”
She tossed her head and gave him a sidelong glance. “I always ask people to go when I don’t want them to.”
He rose at that and stood close to her side, and, stooping, looked in her eyes; and for the first time the color flamed up in her face because of him. “I say––do you want me to go?”
“No, I don’t.”
But the red he had brought into her cheeks intoxicated him with delight. Now he knew a thing to do. He seized her wrists and turned her away from the table and continued to look into her eyes. She twisted about, looking away from him, but the burning blush made even the little ear she turned toward him pink, and he loved it. His discretion was all gone. He loved her, and he would tell her now––now! She must hear it, and slipping his arm around her, he drew her away and out to the seat under the old silver-leaf poplar tree.
“You’re acting silly, Peter Junior,––and my bread will all spoil and get too light,––and my hands are all covered with flour, and––”
“And you’ll sit right here while I talk to you a bit, if the bread spoils and gets too light and everything burns to a cinder.” She started to run away from him, and his peremptory tone changed to pleading. “Please, Betty, dear! just hear me this far. I’m going away, Betty, and I love you. No, sit close and be my sweetheart. Dear, it isn’t the old thing. It’s love, and it’s what I want you 92 to feel for me. I woke up yesterday, and found I loved you.” He held her closer and lifted her face to his. “You must wake up, too, Betty; we can’t play always. Say you’ll love me and be my wife––some day––won’t you, Betty?”
She drooped in his arms, hanging her head and looking down on her floury hands.
“Say it, Betty dear, won’t you?”
Her lip quivered. “I don’t want to be anybody’s wife––and, anyway––I liked you better the other way.”
“Why, Betty? Tell me why.”
“Because––lots of reasons. I must help mother––and I’m only seventeen, and––”
“Most eighteen, I know, because––”
“Well, anyway, mother says no girl of hers shall marry before she’s of age, and she says that means twenty-one, and––”
“That’s