He went away before her husband came in, and Elsie underwent a momentary, essentially superficial, reaction.
“I’m getting soppy about that boy—that’s what I’m doing! Just because he’s got a pair of eyes like—like I don’t know what. Him and Geraldine! It’s too ridiculous. Why, he’s younger even than me.”
She reflected that if Morrison, indeed, had been a year or two older, he would certainly have kissed her by this time. But it was quite evident to her that such an idea had never even crossed his mind. He viewed her with obvious admiration, and with great respect.
The next day Elsie bought a book of poems, about which Morrison had told her. She read some of them, and it seemed to her that she had a new understanding of a form of expression which had never made the least appeal to her before.
“I’m a fool!” Elsie told herself in astonishment, but with an ominous sensation of strange, new emotions, softer than any she had yet known, taking possession of her life. She felt that she would like to give the book to Morrison as a present, but they had made no definite arrangement for meeting again, and she could not bring herself to send it by post. Restlessness possessed her.
It was a relief when one evening her husband began to speak of their summer holiday.
“We can start on Tuesday, like we planned. Cleaver gets back on Monday morning, and the sooner we get to the sea in this weather, the better. It won’t last.”
“It might. September can be a ripping month sometimes,” said Elsie dreamily.
“That’s your experience, is it? Well, it’s not mine. I only hope we shan’t have a rainy spell as we did last year, and sit in an everlasting sitting-room without so much as a book to look at.”
Elsie shuddered at the recollection. She and Horace had quarrelled incessantly throughout their last holiday.