Walking down Roulstone Street, the lowering afternoon sun full in his face across the open squares, Frank Sunderline thought how pleasant it would be to have Ray Ingraham go out to Pomantic such an afternoon as this, and see what he had done; just now, while it was still his work, warm from his hand, and before it was shut away from her and him by the Newrich carpets and curtains and china and servants going in and fastening the doors upon them.
He would make a treat of it,—a holiday,—if she would go; he would come and take her with a horse and buggy. He would not ask her to go with him in the cars and be stared at.
He had never thought of asking her to go to ride, or of showing her any set "attention" before. Frank Sunderline was not one of the young fellows who begin, and begin in a hurry, at that end.
He walked faster, as it came into his head at that moment; something of the same perception that would come to her,—if she cared for this asking of his,—came to him with the sudden suggestion that it was the next, the natural thing to do; that their friendship had grown so far as that. The story comes to a man with some such beautiful, scarce-anticipated steps of revelation as it does to a woman, when he takes his life in the true, whole, patient order, and does not go about to make some pretty sham of living before he has done any real living at all.
Yes; he would ask her to ride out to Pomantic with him to-morrow; and he thought she would go.
He liked her looks, to-night; he looked at her with this plan in his thoughts, and it lighted her up; he was conscious of his own notice of her, and of what it had grown to in him, insensibly, knowing her so well and long. He analyzed, or tried to analyze, his rest and pleasure in her; the reason why all she did and wore and said had such a sweet and winning fitness to him. What was it that made her look so different from other girls, and yet so nice?
"I like the way you dress, Ray; you and Dot;" he said to her, when tea was over and taken away, and she was replacing the cloth and setting the sewing-lamp down upon the table. "You don't snarl yourselves up. I can't bear a tangle of things."
Ray colored.
"You mean skirts, I suppose," she said, laughing "We can't afford two apiece, at a time. So we have taken to aprons."
It was a very simple expedient, and yet it came near enough to custom to avoid a strait and insufficient look. They wore plain black cashmere dresses, plaited in at the waist, and belted to their pretty figures, over these, round, full aprons, tied behind with broad, hemmed bows. They were of cross-barred muslin, for every day,—cheap and pretty and fresh; black silk ones replaced them upon serious occasions. This was their house wear; in the street they contented themselves with their plain basquines; and I think if anybody missed the bunches and festoons, it was only as Frank Sunderline said, with an unexplained impression of the absence of a "snarl."