“Birds’ eggs,” said Laura with a twinkle.
“Oho! Now I see! Well, fire ahead! ‘Justin would be bored.’ Not that that would hurt him.”
“No, but, he’d go home. And if I were myself for a week he’d go home for good. I’d lose him. And then I’d die.”
“You won’t keep it up when you’re married,” said Coral, with her esoteric smile.
“I shall. Always and always and always. Every day till the last minute of my life. What does it matter? I’m happy. But it’s all nonsense to say that two plants can grow in one pot. It doesn’t work. They haven’t room. But you can graft one on to the other as a rule. I’m grafted on to Justin. Oh, I daresay I’d have been a showier plant in a pot of my own; but it’s too late to ungraft me now. I’d shrivel. I’m rooted in Justin.”
Coral, demolishing that theory of life, was Jael and her hammer in one.
“That’s crazy. That doesn’t work. Suppose he died? What’s the use of shuddering? He might. It’s not common sense to get so fond of any one. It’s not fair to yourself.”
Laura smiled.
“You needn’t worry about me.”
“And—” Coral had an odd, fugitive air of resenting the happy light in Laura’s eyes—“it’s not fair to him.”