"Has he made you an offer yet?" one of them said wistfully, with one eye on Clara as a bride, and the other on a lost companion.
"No," Clara answered demurely, hiding the fact that she had not so much as spoken to the dark-faced young man whom she sometimes met in her walks, and whom in a dull hour she had once described with such vivacity and feeling that her hearers were sure she had lost her heart to him; consequently, that the young man must at least have hinted at his devotion, or she could hardly have condescended to love him.
"You mustn't give up hope, my dear. There may be reasons."
"There are," Clara said darkly, and left her old friend in a flutter.
"There are reasons," she told her sisters. "It will all come right in the end."
Clara noticed, with some amusement, that her meetings with the tall young man were growing more and more frequent. When she set out on her morning errands he would often chance to pass the gate, and she came to look for his long figure on her walks, even to think that day unprofitable on which she did not see him. At length he sat opposite to her at church, gazing at her with unhappy eyes throughout the service, and after that she ceased to talk about him, and the old ladies, thinking she suffered, gave her unexpected little presents of sweetmeats or knitted cuffs.
At last and, it may be supposed, out of her ready pity and desire to help, she contrived as he went by to drop a little packet from her muff. It was a very ancient trick to play, she knew, and merriment was lighting her eyes and twitching the corners of her mouth as she stood there in the snow and watched him pounce on the treasure with such an eagerness of service. She was half-ashamed of herself, but wholly amused until she saw his eyes as he returned the parcel. He looked hungry, and the laughter ebbed from her face as, with a strange mixture of horror and elation, she knew that if he really wanted her he could have her.
His courtship was rapid and their engagement short, but its permanence was threatened, for when she learnt that he was idly living on the small income left him by a father who had refused to give him a trade or a profession, she said she would not marry him until he found one.
"But you can't pick one up by the roadside," he explained with justice.
"But how, oh how, did you ever consent to such wickedness?"