“I scarcely agree with you,” she said primly. “A touch might do, but more smacked too loudly of masculinity. Ladies should allow their men to say those things for them.”
Mahala knew, having settled this point to her satisfaction, what would be coming next. She excused herself and hurried to join Edith who was waiting for her, the glamour of her triumph still illuminating her. Her programme was in very plain sight; as Junior came toward them, he could sense it blocking his path. He had been constrained to admit to himself that Edith looked that night as he had not dreamed that it was possible that she could. But he never had liked her. He did not care for her now, and every fibre of his being was in irritated protest against that sheaf of lilies and roses that had been given Mahala. It might have been from her father or mother, possibly she had out-of-town relatives, but if she had, why had she never mentioned them? Who was there who could have shown the taste and spent the money, and who had dared to set one blood-red rose in a sheaf of virgin white?
He brushed roughly past Edith, paying not the slightest attention to her. He seized Mahala’s programme, and against her protests, began writing his name all over it. Her father and mother were standing directly behind her; beside them, his own parents. Edith glanced toward them in a vain effort to hide the quiver of her lips, and saw that all of them were laughingly acquiescing. Junior, looking over Mahala’s head, saw them, also.
Carried away by their approval, he caught Mahala into his arms and swept her into the first dance. Then, guiding her to a flower-screened corner, in the scarcely adequate shelter of the foliage, he deliberately crushed her in his arms and kissed her on the mouth.
She pushed him away, protesting angrily. With a bit of lace supposed to be a handkerchief, she roughly scoured the curve of her lips to a brighter red than the freely flowing blood of the evening had tinted them.
That provoked Junior so that he said to her: “You might as well stop that! You’re the only girl I love, or ever intend to love, and I’m going to marry you. I’ve got a lot selected and I’m working on the plans for our house right now.”
Mahala drew back and looked at Junior intently for a few seconds, looked as deep into his eyes as any one ever saw into the eyes of either Moreland, father or son. She said slowly and deliberately: “If that’s the truth, Junior, you’re wasting time. I’m not going to marry any one until I’ve finished college, and I have not the slightest intention of marrying you at any time.”
A slow red mounted into Junior’s cheeks, a queer spark of white light snapped in the back of his eyes.
“You don’t mean that,” he said tensely. “You only say it to get me going. You want me down on my knees before you. You want me to whine and beg for you like a hungry puppy dog.”
Mahala reached out a hand and deliberately laid it upon Junior’s.