At length, about eight o’clock, just as it was beginning to get dark, she suggested that he should go and sit a while with her father.
“And what are you going to do?” asked Arthur.
“Oh! I am going to read a little, and then go to bed; I always go to bed about nine;” and she held out her hand to say good-night. He took it and said,
“Good-night, then; I wish it were to-morrow.”
“Why?”
“Because then I should be saying, ‘Good-morning, Angela,’ instead of ‘Good-night, Angela,’ May I call you Angela? We seem to know each other so well, you see.”
“Yes, of course,” she laughed back; “everybody I know calls me Angela, so why shouldn’t you?”
“And will you call me Arthur? Everybody I know calls me Arthur.”
Angela hesitated, and Angela blushed, though why she hesitated and why she blushed was perhaps more than she could have exactly said.
“Y-e-s, I suppose so—that is, if you like it. It is a pretty name, Arthur. Good-night, Arthur,” and she was gone.