I sighed. "Too late. He doesn't want to, now. Ah, if he did!"
Then without warning or reason there flashed into my mind the queerest thought of all. "Supposing he does want to? Supposing all this about Muriel is a mistake? Supposing it's me he does care for all the time?"
I said aloud, "What lunatic rubbish!" and bent to look once more at the window of the churn.
Hurray! A few precious golden granules were forming on the glass. The butter was coming at last. Cheers! Much encouraged, I went on making the big churn spin round and round.
And as I did so, that lunatic theory spun in my head. Yes! Suppose Dick Holiday-Wynn did care for me. Hadn't he sought me out, followed me, taken the keenest interest in everything I did or said? Hadn't he confided in me? ... Ah! That story of the girl to whom he'd proposed, and who had said neither "Yes" nor "No" to him! Why had I made so sure that this had meant Muriel? Supposing it had been ... me? Supposing this had been his way of telling me?
Here a change in the sound of the milk in the churn, dashed round and round, warned me that the butter was "knocking." I churned with a will, and with a memory suddenly warming my heart.
That day of the thunderstorm in the hayfield, when we had sheltered together under the elms! Hadn't he said "Dear" to me? Had he meant it?
There was a possibility, a wonderful, dizzy, blissful possibility that——
"How's that butter, Joan?" asked a bright voice that brought me abruptly back from possibilities to facts as Mrs. Price stepped quickly into the dairy and up to the churn. "Yes! That's it, now, my dear——"
For we had unscrewed the round lid and taken it off the churn.