“Oh, Hildegarde!”
“Yes. It was dreadfully grotesque, too—our hands were stuck together by that great yellow rope of taffy, and I could only stammer and get redder. But I did say I was not going to forgive him. Nobody had ever been so rude to me before. Then he got awfully serious and said all kinds of things—”
“What kind?”
“And at last he asked me what was wrong with Ch-Cheviot—your old joke, you know.”
Bella clenched her hands. Sacrilege! to present her joke to another girl! She had always imagined that would be just how he would propose to her. He would say: “Bella, my beautiful, what’s the matter with Ch-Cheviot?”
“Well, go on.”
“If I didn’t like him enough he said, what sort of man was I going to like? And I thought it only fair to give him some idea, so I tried to soften it by laughing a little—I’d forgiven him by then, you know, for he’d said such things—”
“What things?”
“Oh, sorry kind of things, and he looked so—so—well, I’d forgiven him. But I told him plainly that if it ever is a question of the sort of man I am to care for, it won’t be some one who is just nice and makes me have a good time. It will be some great, gloomy creature who makes me cry—and lifts me to the stars. I was laughing, but I meant it—and I said: ‘I’d worship that kind of man.’”
“What did he say then?”