And she who loved him with a love beyond expression could frame no words in answer to that question. Thus it came to pass that, in the days to come, it was there, unanswered; ready to return and beat upon her brain with merciless reiteration: “Was I right to keep him waiting, even for a day.”
In the hall, beside the marble table, where lay the visitors’ book, they paused to say good-night. From the first, Myra had never allowed him up the stairs until her door was closed. “If you don’t keep the rules I think it right to make, Jim,” she had said, with her little tender smile, “I shall, in self-defence, engage Miss Murgatroyd as chaperon; and what sort of a time would you have then?”
So Jim was pledged to remain below until her door had been shut five minutes. After which he used to tramp up the stairs whistling:
| “A long long life, to my sweet wife, And mates at sea; And keep our bones from Davy Jones, Where’er we be. And may you meet a mate as sweet——” |
Then his door would bang, and Myra would venture to give vent to her suppressed laughter, and to sing a soft little
| “Yeo ho! we go!—Yeo ho! Yeo ho!” |
for sheer overflowing happiness.
But this was the last evening. A parting impended. Also there had been tense moments in the honeysuckle arbour.