“Anyhow, I don’t mean to think about marrying yet,” she said brightly. “Not for years to come. I shan’t mind now I have told you. Cress must learn to hold his tongue. I believe he was half in joke all the time.”
Cress might have been; but I knew it was not so with Jack.
We had gone some distance, and now we turned, Maimie continuing in the same strain, flushed and bright-eyed still. Cherry and the two small boys came to meet us, and Cress was sitting beside his father, looking moody and dismal. Poor silly boy! What could have become of Jack? That question rose next. I said in a matter-of-fact tone, “Jack was here before you all came back. He will meet us at the landing.”
Then Robert woke up, and we began to talk of going home.
Cress evidently wanted to show Maimie by his manner that he was very wretched. But Maimie hardly looked at him, and clung persistently to my side. On the border of the river we found Jack, looking so white and spiritless, that Cherry asked if he had a headache, and Maimie gave a guilty start, as if she felt herself to blame.
The return trip was not so cheery as the morning row had been. Jack worked at his oar persistently, saying little; while Cress chose to consider himself too tired for exertion, putting off his share of work upon other people.
Cherry was the merriest of the party, in her quiet way, but gradually she woke up to the fact of something unusual, and became silent like the rest. It was not till we had left the boat and were walking home that I found an opportunity to whisper a few words as to what had passed. She said only, “O dear, how silly! And poor Jack’s day is all spoilt!”
“We mustn’t let Maimie think we pity Jack too much,” I said. “I want her to feel perfectly free; and they are so absurdly young at present. The less we make of the affair, the better.”
“But it is no mere fancy with Jack,” Cherry said; and I felt sure from her manner that Jack had already confided to her his hopes for the future. “Mother she will learn to love him some day; don’t you think so?”
“I don’t know at all,” I said. “Maimie loves him now as a cousin,—as a brother, perhaps. But whether he could ever be anything more to her is another question.”