“But, Tanta, I assure you I am not engaged to anybody,” struck in Colvin. Coming on the top of his own meditations only that morning the remark jarred on him. Somehow, being made as it was this evening, it more than doubly jarred on him, why, he could not have told then, but he knew afterwards.
“Not engaged to her?” repeated this antique terror. “Then you ought to be. All young men ought to be married as soon as possible; it is a duty they owe to themselves and the community, and you are rather an old young man. Nee, I do not believe you. Your grandfather, the great and good Calvinus, would not have said what was not true; and I have heard this from many people, so it must be true.”
“Well, it is not true, Tanta, however many people say it,” said Colvin, with emphasis, and an unpleasant consciousness of feeling ever so slightly foolish. Aletta, he could see, was in the wildest throes of suppressed mirth, and Stephanus had to flee the room and go and stand out in the pouring rain and laugh till he cried. “I tell you it is absolutely true that I am not engaged to anybody, and am not in the least likely to be.”
“Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself, nephew,” retorted the old woman, whacking the floor with her stick. “What do you suppose the good God gave you health and strength for—”
“No, this is getting too thick,” said Colvin in an undertone.
“Good-night, Tanta. I want to see Stephanus upon some very important business before he goes to bed. Good-night”; and he made for the door.
The old woman subsided, nodded a little, and then made up her mind to go to bed. When she had done so Colvin returned, accompanied by Stephanus. Aletta’s bright face lit up at sight of him, and with the consciousness that she could now laugh unrestrained.
“Upon my word, Miss De la Rey,” he said, “your respected relative is something of a terror. First, she wants to make me three or four hundred years old by assigning me for grandfather some historic old bore who flourished in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, I forget which. Then she is eager to rush me into a haphazard matrimonial contract. No, really it is laying it on just a little too thick.”
“Oh, it was awfully funny. But, do you know, Mr Kershaw, we had heard just the same thing? We didn’t tell her, you know, but we had heard it,” said Aletta, her face brimming over with mischief.
“Well, you heard what has no foundation in fact, what is entirely untrue,” he answered, with some vague stirring over the emphasis wherewith he did answer, remembering the psychological moment of two or three nights ago.