I explained some of this feeling to Cousin Eunice, in idiomatic English, after breakfast on Monday morning, but here was a hue and cry. It was the wrong thing for me to do, she declared. I should stay here and get better acquainted with my fiancé. Besides, the first few weeks of a courtship were too dear and precious to be spent apart! I should die of homesickness for a sight of this beautiful city where I had gained my new-found joy!
I mentioned the matter to Richard when he came that evening—that I wanted to go home for a day or so anyway, then I might come back—and I found that he approved the plan most decidedly.
"I shall be out of town for several weeks," he said, "and of course I don't want you here in the city while I'm away." He spoke with a half-playful air, but I had already learned to read his expression so well that I knew he was in earnest. "You don't suppose for a minute I'm going to give any other fellow a chance to steal you away from me now, do you? Before I have had time to realize my good fortune?"
"I wish you would not talk that way, even in jest," I told him seriously. "It implies a kind of distrust."
He had been there quite half an hour when this took place, but he came over to my chair and kissed me for the first time. If Richard does treat his wife as a plaything, as Cousin Eunice suggested, I don't believe he will find it necessary to shower many violets and diamonds upon her. I believe that kisses will do the work.
"Distrust! Love, little love, don't say that again!"
"Then let's for ever bar discussions about any other man."
"I shall be delighted to! And, to make assurance doubly sure, I'm going to pack you off down home, as I mentioned yesterday. I'll be gone just a few weeks, and shall, of course, run down to see you the minute I get back to this part of the state. I am going by Charlotteville to tell mother and Evelyn the news."
"And we'll have letters every day."
"And I'll call you up whenever I'm where a long-distance 'phone is. Some of those little towns don't boast one."