“Oh, there’s no doubt about it!”
And they glanced at each other like conspirators who have lighted a fuse and cannot take refuge in flight. Their eyes said continually, with a delicious, an enchanting mixture of ingenuous modesty and fearful joy:
“Well, we’ve gone and done it!”
There it was, the incredible, incomprehensible future—coming!
Samuel had never correctly imagined the manner of its heralding. He had imagined in his early simplicity that one day Constance, blushing, might put her mouth to his ear and whisper—something positive. It had not occurred in the least like that. But things are so obstinately, so incurably unsentimental.
“I think we ought to drive over and tell mother, on Sunday,” said Constance.
His impulse was to reply, in his grand, offhand style: “Oh, a letter will do!”
But he checked himself and said, with careful deference: “You think that will be better than writing?”
All was changed. He braced every fibre to meet destiny, and to help Constance to meet it.
The weather threatened on Sunday. He went to Axe without Constance. His cousin drove him there in a dog-cart, and he announced that he should walk home, as the exercise would do him good. During the drive Daniel, in whom he had not confided, chattered as usual, and Samuel pretended to listen with the same attitude as usual; but secretly he despised Daniel for a man who has got something not of the first importance on the brain. His perspective was truer than Daniel’s.