"Will you come to the gate with me, Dolly?"
There was a slight pause at that abrupt invitation. He saw Dolly involuntarily start forward and then hesitate, with a faint red wonderment in her cheek. He waited, gazing back eagerly at his fate in the balance.
"Yes, Dolly—come along!" said Georgiana.
II.
The Vicar of Little Easter was in his study. He had not been writing sermons, but pens were lying about the table, and there were other signs of an intellectual struggle.
The old lady looked up keenly.—p. 222.
"I can't do it," he said at last, crumpling up many fragments of blotted paper, each the unlucky beginning of a letter. Then he thrust his hands through his hair, giving it a despairing rumple.
"It's no good," he said. "I can't put it in a letter, and it does look a cowardly way of—asking. Like chalking up a thing and running round the corner. If I were a girl and a fellow wrote to me instead of coming and standing to his guns, I should call it—cheek."
"Dear Dolly——"