“I have always walked whenever and wherever I chose around here. I like it, dear.”
“That don’t make any difference; it ain’t good for any woman to walk eight miles at one time,” John answered shortly.
Unable to see the reason for laying stress upon the danger in doing a thing she had done for years without harm to herself, Elizabeth was surprised into continuing the argument without at all caring whether she ever walked again or not.
“I’ve walked that much a hundred times in my life, and I’ll probably walk it a hundred times more,” she replied with a laugh.
“Not if you live with me,” John Hunter announced, standing as solid as a rock on the issue now that he had raised it.
“But why not?” the girl inquired, still but little concerned, and looking her betrothed over with a girl’s eye for correct combinations of collar, tie, and driving gloves. Those gloves had been the chief objection Elizabeth’s brothers had been able to raise against the Eastern man, and gave colour to the spiteful “dude” with which John Hunter was mentioned by the envious.
“Why not?” John repeated after her. “Because it don’t look well.”
The ridiculous and inadequate reply drew the girl still deeper into the discussion. She began to reason with him quite earnestly. She had always walked a great deal; she loved it. Walking was jolly fun. Everybody knew she was not as dependent upon being taken as the ordinary woman. When, however, John would not give in and insisted that things were different now that they were engaged, she ceased to say more.
“You see,” he concluded, “people expect me to take you. They’ll think something’s happened and that I don’t want to. If I want to take my future wife, she ought to be willing to be taken. I don’t want you ever to walk home again.”
Elizabeth Farnshaw was young, the experiences of her night at home had made her covet peace, she was unaware that she was being moulded, or that her lover considered the Hunter ways, as such, especially desirable. Willing to pay the price, rather enjoying the masterful way in which her betrothed insisted upon serving her, reflecting that no one had ever been willing to serve her at all, and feeling that it was a minor matter, she gave up.