‘Now don’t say that, Mr. Luke—please don’t, now,’ she begged.
‘Perhaps you, on your part, won’t say Mr. Luke,’ said Jocelyn. ‘Not quite so often. Not more than a dozen times a day, for instance.’
Sally was silent. She mustn’t think of him as Mr. Luke, she couldn’t think of him by his outlandish other name, so she thought of him as Husband. ’Usband’s cross,’ she thought; and withdrew into a prudent dumbness.
He ended by scrambling her through the hedge, and across a field as far from the path as possible; and, sitting her down with her back to everything except another hedge, tried to tell her a few things of a necessary but minatory nature.
‘Sally,’ he began, lying down on the grass beside her and taking her hand in his, ‘you know, don’t you, that I love you?’
Sally, cautiously coming out of her silence for a moment, as one who puts a toe into cold water and instantly draws it back again, said, ‘Yes, Mr.——’ stopping herself just in time, and hastily amending, ‘What I means is, yes.’
‘And you know, don’t you, that my one thought is for you and your happiness?’
Yes, she supposed she knew that, thought Sally, fidgeting uneasily, for though the voice and manner were the voice and manner of Mr. Luke there was somehow a smack about them that reminded her of her father when he was going to do what was known in the family as learning her.
‘Don’t you?’ insisted Jocelyn, as she said nothing. ‘Don’t you?’
He looked up into her face in search of an answer, and his voice faltered, he forgot completely what he was going to say, and whispering ‘Oh, I worship you!’ began kissing the hand he held, covering it with kisses, and seizing the other one and covering it with kisses too, while his ears, she could see, for his head lay in her lap, went crimson.