Mrs. West had invited Jean and me to spend the night at her house, for Miss Irene was feeling worse and worse and needed something light to cheer her up. Well, it was just long enough after supper for us to be wishing that we hadn't eaten so many strawberries when Mr. Fairfax came up the walk looking as grand and gloomy as Edgar Allan Poe, right after he had written a poem to his mother-in-law. He said let's take a walk in the moonlight for the air was madding. I always thought before it was maddening, and should be applied only to nuisances, like your next-door neighbor's children, or the piano in the flat above you; but I saw from the dictionary and the way he acted later on that he was right, both about the word and the way he applied it.
Not far down the road from Mrs. West's front gate is a very old-timey school-house, so dilapidated that Jean says she knows it's the one where the little girl said to the little boy, forty years ago:
"I'm sorry that I spelt the word,
I hate to go above you;
Because," the brown eyes lower fell;
"Because, you see, I love you!"
Jean didn't mean a bit of harm when she quoted it, but the sound of that last line made them look as shivery as if they had malaria. We soon found a nice place and sat down on a log that looked less like snakes than the others, and when we saw that there wasn't quite room enough for us all Jean and I had the politeness to go away out of hearing and find another log, over closer to the road. Even then we could hear, for the night was so still and we were so busy with our thoughts.
I began thinking: What if I should have such a hard time to find a lover that is sympathetic and systematic at the same time? Suppose Sir Reginald de Beverley isn't sympathetic about Lord Byron! Suppose he likes his parliamentary speeches better than his poetry, like one husband of a lady that I know does!
But my mind was diverted just then by hearing words coming from the direction of Miss Irene and Mr. Fairfax so much like the little girl said to the little boy forty years ago that I was astonished. I had been told that a girl could always keep a man from proposing when she wanted to! But he was saying that she should come with him and lead the untrammeled life, and she was looking pleased and frightened and was telling him to hush, but was letting him go on; and they were both standing up and holding hands in the moonlight.
"I'm not at all sure it's the untrammeled life I'm looking for," she said in little catchy breaths; "but I'm so wretched! And you're the only one who cares! I suppose I may as well—oh, I wish I had somebody here to keep me from acting an idiot!"