Ned Glover was standing below, his face just on a level with hers; he was looking at her laughingly—in fact he was nearly always laughing—and Merna was never certain that he meant one-half that he was saying, which at this moment was: “Yes; I am going to buy a nice little home, and I want a housekeeper; will you come?”
Merna tossed her head saucily: “I do not intend to go out to service this summer,” she replied.
“If I must do so, I will hire some one to do the work, and have my wife oversee it. Will you come as my wife, Merna?”
Merna flushed rosily, she was not yet sure that he was in earnest, so she replied lightly, “Oh, you are just funning, as the children say.”
He tried to draw his face into lines of seriousness, but his bright blue eyes would twinkle, he was so jolly that it was impossible for him to assume an expression of severe gravity.
He caught her face in both his large palms, and kissed her fondly: “Say yes! Say yes, I tell you!” he whispered forcefully.
“Yes! Yes! Let me go, Ned, mother is looking!”
“Well, mother has a perfect right to look; we do not care!” his face one broad laugh.
Ned was from this time—of course—a privileged visitor; always pleasant, and in a manner affectionate, yet no more loverlike than before their engagement. The tender nonsense that helps to make courtship so sweet; the airs of possession on one side, and of loving subjection on the other, the happy planning by both for the future, seemed to be entirely forgotten.
Love is a magician who fits the eyes with a deceptive lens; but not even through love’s magnifying could Merna find tangible ground for rosy dreams; she was not exactly unhappy, neither was she quite satisfied. She took herself to task for being so foolish—just because of the lack of definite words—but he seemed to have forgotten the engagement altogether, as he made not the slightest allusion to it. It made Merna’s face burn whenever she thought of it: “I do wonder if he was just making game of me, trying to ascertain what answer I would give him! Oh, I wish that I had have said no—Oh, I do not know what I do wish!” angry tears filling her eyes as she thought.