“I am glad to be able to say, Thomas, that you did not look an entire fool when you got up from your knees, as we came into the rose garden.” Thus Lady Alanby, as their carriage turned out of Stornham village.
“I'm glad myself,” Tommy answered.
“What were you doing there? Even if you were asking her to marry you, it was not necessary to go that far. We are not in the seventeenth century.”
Then Tommy flushed.
“I did not intend to do it. I could not help it. She was so—so nice about everything. That girl is an angel. I told her so.”
“Very right and proper spirit to approach her in,” answered the old woman, watching him keenly. “Was she angel enough to say she would marry you?”
Tommy, for some occult reason, had the courage to stare back into his grandmother's eyes, quite as if he were a man, and not a hobbledehoy, expecting to be bullied.
“She does not want me,” he answered. “And I knew she wouldn't. Why should she? I did what you ordered me to do, and she answered me as I knew she would. She might have snubbed me, but she has such a way with her—such a way of saying things and understanding, that—that—well, I found myself on one knee, kissing her hand—as if I was being presented at court.”
Old Lady Alanby looked out on the passing landscape.
“Well, you did your best,” she summed the matter up at last, “if you went down on your knees involuntarily. If you had done it on purpose, it would have been unpardonable.”