“Why don’t you kiss her, Tom? You know you would, you scamp, if I were not here.”
But the old lady would not let him out of her sight; and although Tom was dying to have more explanation with Lizzie, he had to wait for a chance.
When Lizzie rose to go it was late in the afternoon, a bright August afternoon. Tom told her he wanted to speak to her, as she was going to the door, and asked her if he might come down to the parsonage. “He wanted to see Pringle:” he was actually dying to see the young incumbent.
And Lizzie, with a still more tell-tale blush, and a sudden casting down of the pretty violet eyes, and a resting of the long black lashes on her cheek, had murmured to him—
“Come!”
Later on, when the mother and son had had still quieter conversation, and Tom got away, he bent his steps towards the parsonage, his mother wishing him “God speed” on his errand. What on earth could that errand be?
Fortunately, not only was the old campaigner away for the day—she had taken to visiting and bullying the young incumbent’s sick parishioners for him now, and priming them with tracts when a cheerful word would have better suited their ailments; but Pringle was also out with his wife, and Tom found Lizzie alone at home—alone in a very little conservatory, which had witnessed his love-tale before, and where he had parted from her, telling her that she was a heartless jilt.
Lizzie was in the self-same little conservatory, pretending to be very busy putting pots up, and poking about with her trowel, as if horticulture was the ultimate aim and end of existence. She was trying to be very unconscious—oh! what a very feeble pretence it was—and endeavoured to receive Master Tom as if he were an ordinary afternoon caller. Such a very faint endeavour it was.
Tom went forward eagerly. He was not going to be baulked this time, and his military experience had taught him that a determined assault was the best way of securing an enemy’s capitulation.
He went forward, and with one hand he seized the little taper fingers of the young lady; his other arm, the unblushing dog placed round her waist, forcing Miss Lizzie to drop her trowel, and thus reducing her means of defence.