“I can’t do that,” said Sam. “We’re not to meet.”
She pondered it, and him. “Kate told me you were looking ill,” she said with apparent inconsequence. “Well, if you can’t take me to Effie, I must go alone. I’m going, either road. Give me her address and I’ll go to-morrow.”
He wrote it down. “Effie Mannering,” she read. “Aye,” she said grimly, “I’ll give that young woman a piece of my mind.”
“Mother,” he said, alarmed, “you’ll not be rude to her! You’ve not misunderstood?”
“Maybe,” said Anne, “but I don’t think so. I think I understand that you’ve got your silly heads up in the clouds and it’ll do the pair of you a lot of good to have them brought to earth. I’ll know for sure when I’ve set eyes on her.”
“You’ll see the glory of her, then,” he said defiantly.
“Shall I?” she asked. “If you ask me, Sam, there’s been a sight too much glorification about this business. It shapes to me,” she went on, thwarting the protest which was leaping to his lips. “It shapes to me like a plain case of love. Aye, and love’s too rare a thing in this world to be thrown away. I was never one to waste.”
So Anne Branstone took control, and Sam sat staring at her helplessly like a man who dreams.