Along the shaded road they stopped to admire the wonder of the place, and to allow the horses to drink at a spring. While “Sorry” and “Ned” cropped the bushes the two humans nibbled sandwiches and talked.
Miss Levering’s questions showed intelligence; that is, they showed that she knew how to stir up the lecturer in him. She wanted to consider him carefully; so she prodded him gently with artful interrogations; and kept him to his “theory.”
“What brought Petruchio from Verona to Padua?” Blynn asked, as he might have questioned a student.
“I have forgotten the details of the play,” she replied, “I think he said he had come to marry a rich wife.”
“Exactly,” Blynn nodded. “He was drawn to Padua as I have seen a butterfly drawn unerringly to its mate across miles of country. Of course, Petruchio didn’t know what was sending him forth; any more than he knew why his diaphragm was pumping air into his lungs, or why invisible Neptune influences our tides, or why a green weed will suddenly spring into a gold and white daisy. Life is so crowded with intelligent mysterious design that it is difficult to believe that anything happens haphazard.”
“I wonder if my young man has left Verona,” the lady commented with a comic sigh. “I’m getting on! Twenty-two, you know.” She shook her head with grotesque sadness. “He’ll have to hurry or—I’ll be travelling out to meet him.”
“He may be nearer than Verona,” Blynn essayed, still in the seriousness of his exposition. “He may be right here,” waving his hand.
The outright smile on her face caught his eye and brought him to earth. “All right,” he assented cheerfully. “I’ll swallow my theory whole—he may be right here beside you, for all either of us knows. I knew a chap who lived next door to his future wife and never guessed it until one summer he went abroad. He used to tell her all about his girls, too, and get her help and advice. Out on the ocean somewhere it came to him suddenly. Then he wanted to stop the boat! He came back on the next steamer. Fact! Fortunately his wire got in ahead of him, which gave her time to think things over. She was most surprised, but she had to acknowledge that he was right! They figured out that they had been in love a dozen years without once being aware of it. Frightful waste, eh? They’re the happiest couple I know.”
They sat in silence for a moment or two, each thinking a separate train of thought.
“Petruchio,” she turned to him quietly, “would you be so kind as to get out, put the check-rein back on ‘Ned’ and ‘Sorry’, and then hop in and drive with me back to Padua?”