"Are you joining me at breakfast?"
"Come in," cried she.
When the door did not open she went and opened it. There stood HE! If he had greeted her with a triumphant, proprietorial expression she would have been—well, it would have given her a lowered opinion of his sensibility. But his look was just right—dazzled, shy, happy. Nor did he make one of his impetuous rushes. He almost timidly took her hand, kissed it; and it was she who sought his shoulder—gladly, eagerly, with a sudden, real shyness. "Margaret," he said. "Mine—aren't you?"
Here was the Joshua she was to know thenceforth, she felt. This Joshua would enable her to understand, or, rather, to disregard, so far as she personally was concerned, the Josh, tempestuous, abrupt, often absurd, whom the world knew. But—As soon as they went where the guides were, the familiar Josh returned—boyish, boisterous, rather foolish in trying to be frivolous and light. Still—what did it matter? As soon as they should be alone again—
When they set out after breakfast her Joshua still did not return, as she had confidently expected. The obstreperous one remained, the one that was the shrewdly-developed cover for his everlasting scheming mind. "What an unending ass I've been making of myself," he burst out, "with my silly notions." He drew a paper from his pocket and handed it to her. "And this infernal thing of Grant's has been encouraging me in idiocy."
She read the Arkwright gentleman's gazette and complete guide to dress and conduct in the society of a refined gentlewoman. Her impulse was to laugh, an impulse hard indeed to restrain when she came to the last line of the document and read in Grant's neat, careful-man's handwriting with heavy underscorings: "Above all, never forget that you are a mighty stiff dose for anybody, and could easily become an overdose for a refined, sensitive lady." But prudent foresight made her keep her countenance. "This is all very sensible," said she.
"Sensible enough," assented he. "I've learned a lot from it.... Did you read that last sentence?"
She turned her face away. "Yes," she said.
"That, taken with everything else, all but got me down," said he somberly. "God, what I've been through! It came near preventing us from discovering that you're not a grand lady but a human being." His mood veered, and it was he that was gay and she glum; for he suddenly seized her and subjected her to one of those tumultuous ordeals so disastrous to toilette and to dignity and to her sense of personal rights. Not that she altogether disliked; she never had altogether disliked, had found a certain thrill in his rude riotousness. Still, she preferred the other Joshua Craig, HER Joshua, who wished to receive as well as to give. And she wished that Joshua, her Joshua, would return. She herself had thought that, so far as she was concerned, those periods of tender and gentle sentiment would be episodic; but it was another thing for him to think so—and to show it frankly. "I feel as if I'd had an adventure with a bear," said she, half-laughing, half-resentful.
"So you did," declared he; "I'm a bear—and every other sort of animal—except rabbit. There's no rabbit in me. Now, your men—the Grant Arkwrights—are all rabbit."