“It was I; but it was you who put the bars up and have kept them there.”
“Was I to let the bars down and wait at the gate?”
“If need be. It should be that way between us, Margaret, shouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Margaret said, “I don’t know.” She flashed a sudden odd look at him. “If—when I put the bars down, I shall run for my life. I give you warning, David.”
“Warning is all I want,” David said contentedly. He could barely reach her hand across the intervening expanse of leather couch, but he accomplished it,—he was too wise to move closer to her. “You’re a lovely, lovely being,” he said 298 reverently. “God grant I may reach you and hold you.”
She curled a warm little finger about his.
“What would Mrs. Bolling say?” she asked practically.
“To tell you the truth, she spoke of it the other day. I told her the Eleanor story, and that rather brought her to her senses. She wouldn’t have liked that, you know; but now all the eligible buds are plucked, and she wants me to settle down.”
“Does she think I’m a settling kind of person?”
“She wouldn’t if she knew the way you go to my head,” David murmured. “Oh, she thinks that you’ll do. She likes the ten Hutchinsons.”