“You might tease us about being in love.”
“They might say we were actually engaged!”
All this we—Mr. Waters and I—are spared. The feeling of it, which is there like a brick wall between almost every unattached young man and young woman, I know; I’ve felt it there between Sydney and myself, long, long before I knew he admired me.
And this same wall—well, it’s not so much that it’s never been built, or even that it’s been pulled down, as that it’s not between Mr. Waters and me, just because we’re sitting on the top of it and talking all the more comfortably for having climbed it together!
Consequently, I really was pleased to accept Mrs. Waters’ invitation. And when she said further, “Billy won’t be able to join us for a fortnight, I’m afraid. Will you go back, dear, to this friend of yours you live with in London, and come on later? Or—of course you know we should love it!—could you come with Blanche and Theo and me?” I said, “Do let me come with you and the girls.”
“That’s right,” said the Governor’s mother. “Then I shall write to Mrs. Roberts at the cottages, and tell her to have the extra bedroom in my cottage ready for you.”
“And I will write to Cicely Harradine—that’s the girl I live with,” said I. “And I ought to go up one day this week to the flat, and see her and collect a few things.”
“Go up on Saturday, dear,” suggested the Governor’s mother. “Then Billy could motor you up; he would like that so much.”
She has so many plans of this kind for me, fostered by this delusion that her son is always on the look-out for a chance to be alone with me.
Of course it’s not quite the same kind of delusion now that it was a week ago.