CHAPTER VII—DRAWING TOGETHER
THE eleven days Dick had given her for considering were going faster than any other days Annie had known. To make it worse, she had to pass them alone, for Beveridge, who was always diverting, hardly appeared after Dick sailed away. It was now the afternoon of the tenth day, a bright, cool afternoon with a southerly breeze and a rippling lake. She was in her room, looking out at the pier, where the Schmidt lay, when a voice caught her ear. She stepped nearer to the window and then could see Beveridge and his friend Wilson standing on the beach. While she looked, Wilson said good-by, and strolled over to the pier; and Beveridge turned irresolutely toward the house on stilts, looking up at the flowering balcony.
Annie remembered that she had not watered her flowers. She always waited until the shadows crept around to the eastern side of the house; they were here now, so, filling her pitcher, she stepped out. Beveridge, fully recovered from the odd sensations of his evening with Madge, raised his cap, but found that she had turned her back on him and was absorbed in her forget-me-nots. “Annie,” he called, “aren't you going to speak to me?”
“Oh,”—she came to the railing,—“oh, how do you do?”
“Won't you come out?”
“Why—I suppose I might.”
“All right. I 'll wait down here.” When she appeared on the steps, he suggested a sail.
“I don't mind—if the wind holds. It's not very strong, and it may go down with the sun.” She was looking about from lake to sky with the easy air of a veteran mariner; and he was looking at her.
“Let's chance it.”
So they pushed out; and at the moment when Dick and the Merry Anne were coasting along the bluffs above Grosse Pointe the Captain was skimming out on a long tack for the Lake View reef.
Little was said until they were entering on the second mile, then this from Beveridge, lounging on the windward rail, “Have you been thinking about our talk that evening, Annie?”
“Oh, dear!” thought she; but she said nothing.
“You haven't forgotten what I said?”
“Oh, the evening you came up for me?”
“Yes, and Smiley came later.”
“But you don't—you don't want me to think that you meant—”
“But I did, Annie. Do you remember I told you I thought I had a fair chance to be something in the world? Well, I'm nearer it than I thought, even then. There are a good many things I'm going to tell you some day,—not just yet,—but when you know them, you 'll understand why I've dared to talk this way. If I didn't believe I was going to be able to do for you all you could want, and more; if I didn't feel pretty sure I could help you to grow up away from this beach, to get into surroundings that will set you off as you deserve, I'd never have said a word. But I can do these things, Annie. And if I could only know that I had the right to do them for you—I want to take you away from here.”
“But I don't want to leave the beach.”
“I know—I think I understand just how you feel. It's natural—you were born here—you've never seen anything else. But I can't stay here, and I can't go without you. I can't get along anywhere without you.”
“But—”
“What, Annie?”
“You've got along very—very well, lately.”
“No—that's just it, I haven't. My work has kept me out of town.”
“Your work?”
“Yes, I've—”
“Mr. Beveridge, are you a student, or aren't you?”