“No, mother! but I'm sorry you kept things waiting; I can do well enough without.”
“It's not right to go without your regular meals, Gilbert. Sit up to the table!”
She poured out the tea, and Gilbert ate and drank in silence. His mother said nothing, but he knew that her eye was upon him, and that he was the subject of her thoughts. Once or twice he detected a wistful, questioning expression, which, in his softened mood, touched him almost like a reproach.
When the table had been cleared and everything put away, she resumed her seat, breathing an unconscious sigh as she dropped her hands into her lap. Gilbert felt that he must now speak, and only hesitated while he considered how he could best do so, without touching her secret and mysterious trouble.
“Mother!” he said at last, “I have something to tell you.”
“Ay, Gilbert?”
“Maybe it'll seem good news to you; but maybe not. I have asked Martha Deane to be my wife!”
He paused, and looked at her. She clasped her hands, leaned forward, and fixed her dark, mournful eyes intently upon his face.
“I have been drawn towards her for a long time,” Gilbert continued. “It has been a great trouble to me, because she is so pretty, and withal so proud in the way a girl should be,—I liked her pride, even while it made me afraid,—and they say she is rich also. It might seem like looking too high, mother, but I couldn't help it.”
“There's no woman too high for you, Gilbert!” Mary Potter exclaimed. Then she went on, in a hurried, unsteady voice: “It isn't that—I mistrusted it would come so, some day, but I hoped—only for your good, my boy, only for that—I hoped not so soon. You're still young—not twenty-five, and there's debt on the farm;—couldn't you ha' waited a little, Gilbert?”