"I don't know. I'll think about it." She realised suddenly that a good deal might hang upon her answer.
"I can see no reason why you should hesitate."
Doris would not wait to discuss the question. She caught up a basket of flowers, just gathered, and went to put them in her father's study. He loved flowers, with the tenderness which underlay his rugged exterior. While she was there, standing by a little side-table, he came in and surprised her in the act of dropping quiet tears into a mass of blooms.
He had watched her of late with a growing sense of uneasiness; but it was not his way to interfere hastily. Silence with him was often wrongly supposed to mean non-observation.
"There!" Doris said cheerfully, when she heard his step; and she pushed the vase to its right position, then looked up with a smile. But two great drops, ready to fall, refused to be held back, and they splashed obtrusively upon a sheet of half-written paper. "Oh, what a duffer I am! I've spoilt a page of your sermon, daddy."
He shut the door, and went to his chair. Something in his look kept her when she would fain have fled. Instead of so doing, she drew nearer.
"Don't mind about me. I shall get all right in time."
She knelt on a stool in front of him, trying to smile.
"I wonder—will life always be so difficult!"
"As what?"