"If only Primrose could be made to overlook it, then I'll have 'ee and welcome, Loveday, and pay you a florin a week too, which would soon add up to enough. I'd be glad for 'ee to stay on after the Flora too, for Primrose's time'll be near."
Loveday had no interest in what happened after the dance. Life would be all golden ever after, something wonderful and new would certainly begin; it was to mark the great division in her life, but gratitude and the caution born of years of slights held her silent on that subject to the good Mrs. Lear.
"Wait 'ee here," Mrs. Lear bade her, and herself went back into the kitchen. She was gone some minutes, that to Loveday dragged as weeks, though when she reappeared Loveday felt that the time of waiting had gone too soon, and she wished for it to begin once more, so much she dreaded to ask what had been said. Mrs. Lear spared her the need for questioning.
"'Tes no manner of use, Loveday," she said, "Primrose won't hear of it, and being as she is, I can't contrairy her."
Loveday felt the futility of argument, and, indeed, in the violent reaction that attacks such ardent natures, she felt too numb to make the attempt even had she wished. She stood staring at Mrs. Lear with her eyes dark in her pale face and the first presage of defeat in her heart.
CHAPTER VII: IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
Chapter VII
IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND
It were a weary task to chronicle all the ways trodden by Loveday during the three weeks that followed her visit to Upper Farm, and yet, even so, it would not be as weary as was the treading of them to that still ardent though fearful girl. Hers grew to be a dread that would have seemed to a spectator disproportionate indeed—for what can one heart know of the sickness of another's, of its hurried beating when hope beckons, of its numb slackening when hope fails? How swift to Loveday seemed the relentless patter of the days past her questing feet, that, run hither and thither as she would, yet could not keep pace with Time's urgency! How slow to Loveday seemed the ticking of each moment, since each held hope and fear full-globed, as in bubbles that rise and rise only to burst into the empty air! So each moment rose, rounded, to meet Loveday, held, and broke, till her mind was but a daze which confounded speed with slowness, till she thought the future would never be the present and found perpetually that it was the past.