“Well,—no-o—. But in a very nice place. I take my meals across from the store.”
“The store?”
“Yes. I am painting Christmas things—cards and so on. It’s pleasant work. And my room looks out on the side of a church. And there’s a stained-glass window there, and ivy all over the church wall.”
Mr. England began again, low and deep and earnestly. “Once in a lifetime,” he said, “a man meets a girl like you—sweet and sensible and good, that can take a blow like this without a word, find her feet again, and begin her fight bravely, doing without things that are second nature to her, and going without comforts for a friend, even when that friend is only a horse!”
“But I couldn’t do without Hector,” Missy declared. “I love him too much.”
(I rubbed my nose against her sleeve.)
“Sometimes I’ve had a terrible thought,” she said, half in a whisper. “It was that I might be forced to part with him. And—and I’ve wondered—oh, you’ll forgive me, I hope—if I have to, you’ll take him, Mr. England? He’s a perfect lady’s saddler.”
“You mean,—I may need a lady’s saddler?”
“Well, you—you might.”
“I shall—if I have my way about it.”