At length Dolly brought matters to a point in her characteristic manner of assumed ingenuousness. “I think, dear,” she said, “we had better tell mother about it now, hadn’t we? She will be so hurt if she finds that we’ve been leaving her out of our happiness.”
Jim made no protest. He felt rather stupid, and the thought of going to Mrs. Darling, hand-in-hand with Dolly, seemed to him to be positively frightening in its crudity. It would be like walking straight into a trap. He would have preferred to slip off to a registry-office, and to see no friend or relative for a year afterwards.
The ordeal, however, proved to be less painful than he had anticipated, thanks to the tact displayed by Mrs. Darling. When Dolly came into the room at the cottage, triumphantly leading in her captive, the elder woman at once checked any utterance which was about to be made by declaring that Jim had just arrived in time to advise her in the choice of a new chintz for her chairs.
“Dolly, dear,” she said, “run upstairs and fetch me that book of patterns, will you?” And as soon as the girl had left the room she added: “I wonder whether your taste will agree with Dolly’s?”
“I expect so,” he replied, significantly.
“I hope so, for your sake,” she smiled; and then, turning confidentially to him, she whispered: “Tell me quickly, before she comes back: do you seriously want to marry her, or shall I help you to get out of it?”
Jim was completely startled, and stammered the beginning of an incoherent reply.
She interrupted him, putting a plump hand on his shoulder. “It has been clear to me for some time that Dolly is desperately in love with you, and I know she has brought you here to settle the thing. But I’m a woman of the world, my dear boy: I don’t want to rush you into anything you don’t intend; for the fact is, I like you very much indeed.”
Jim made the only possible reply. “But,” he said with conviction, “I want to marry her. I’ve come to ask you. May I?”