“And you look on yourself as a successful crammer? Haven’t you seen the advertisements, ‘particular attention paid to neglected children’? You are paying me particular attention. Don’t you think that my education is pretty nearly complete, Jack?”
“Oh, you have a lot to learn yet; but you are coming on. You have learned that my name is Jack—that’s a distinct advance. Oh, my dear girl, the delight of teaching you all—all—all!”
“I had no idea that you were so ardent an educationist. Ah, I knew you would come to me! But what I have been asking myself for several days is, Were there no girls in your own station in life——”
She could not finish her question for laughter; the phrase which her father was very fond of using sounded very funny coming from her lips, which were—as she had found out—exactly on a level with his own.
“Station of life? Station of life? Your lips are the waiting room—a first-class waiting room in the station of life,” said he.
That was how he received her suggestion that he was ready to make what his relations would undoubtedly call a mesalliance in asking her to be his wife; though, as a matter of fact, he had not yet asked her to be his wife. Perhaps she should have regarded his movements during the previous five minutes merely in the light of a friendly attention to enable him to see if she was amicably disposed toward him.
“Let that be the last word of frivolity between us,” she said. “I want to be serious. Be sure, my dear Jack, that this is the most serious moment that has come into our lives.”
“I know it—I know it, my beloved,” said he. “I know that meeting you was the most important thing in my life. And I know that marrying you will be the wisest. You are the first person in the world who gave me credit for having any backbone. You are the first person in the world to give me a sort of respect for myself. My mother is the dearest soul on earth; but she has never thought it necessary to help me on to anything. She was quite content that I should live and inherit the property, and follow her to the grave and then go there myself, doing as little as possible in the interim. It’s wonderful how little a country gentleman can do if he only puts his heart into the business of idling. I think it quite likely that I might have made a record in this way. But you came into my life, and—and you have become my life. That’s why I want you to stay with me—to stand by me, and you’ve promised to do it?”
“Have I?” she said. “Yes, I suppose I have; at any rate, whether I have or not you may be sure that I’ll do it. And don’t you doubt, Jack, that we’ll do something in the world before we are parted. A man without a woman beside him represents an imperfect scheme of life. Life—that does not mean a man, nor does it mean a woman; it means the man and the woman. So it was in the beginning, so it is to-day. Life—the man and the woman, each living for the other. That’s life, isn’t it?”
“It is; and we’ll do some living, you and I, Priscilla, if others have failed.”