"Let me talk, please, Culpepper. Thank you for wanting me and for telling me. Though I don't believe you've ever realized that I've resented the way you've taken me for granted, you and Cousin Maria, and Auntie, and, yes, even Papa. But that's not what I want to speak about. It's this. There's no power in heaven or earth right now could make me marry either you or Tuttle! If he asks me to-day, and I won't hold him off any longer, I'll say so to him. When I come to marrying, I see it perfectly clearly and of a sudden to-day, it's going to be beyond any imagining or shade of possibility that's it's because it's a solution for me! I'm finding myself a little bit these days. I'm going to prove what I've found now. When I come to marry, it's going to be because I choose to give up independence to do it. How I'll get the independence I'm sure I don't know now, but I will get it," piteously. Then, "Culpepper, Oh, Culpepper," beseechingly as she turned toward him, a cry as from one bereft and needing help, "don't you see? Can't you see? Put yourself where I am, and understand for me!"
They were crossing the home corner now. Tuttle and his glittering show were wheeling in at the curb before the ugly little house. The neighborhood surreptitiously was at its windows. The breeched and booted groom had leaped down.
It was this Tuttle up on the box who wouldn't shame his God by meeting him with anything less than entire correctness. Selina would try not to fail this kindly Tuttle now.
"Coming," she called with pretty gayety to the company aloft as she came in speaking distance, with a lift and a flirt of her parasol before surrendering it to Culpepper for lowering.
Then to Culpepper imploringly. "Speak to Mamma and Auntie for me and reassure them about Papa, won't you, Culpepper? I'll have no chance."
The coach was stationary at the curb, and so by now were Selina and Culpepper. He was big and splendid; she was slim and fair. Greetings were pelting down on them, and Tuttle with an eye on his horseflesh had risen on the box.
"No," from Selina to Tuttle aloft, "don't get down. Or can Jehu on the box get down? Culpepper'll put me up. Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Sampson, Miss Lyle, Mr. Haven, you all up there know Mr. Buxton? I've never mounted a coach before, and I'm horribly afraid I'll perpetrate what a friend of my youth, when she sprained her ankle, called a faux pas. Do give me your hand, Culpepper, and put me up?"
Blessed child!
And did her hand, as he took it, close on his for the instant, beseechingly as it were? Those soft fingers of hers cling to his? Hold to his as though loath to leave them?
He must have thought they did, for after he had put her up on the box to the place directed by Tuttle beside himself, pretty creature that she was, still tremulous but bravely gay with it to wring your heartstrings, this Culpepper made pretence of need for more care of her, and swinging up on the step to arrange her skirt from chance contact with any brake or such matter, whispered softly up in the vernacular he kept for her and ole Miss.