“May I see you home, Janet?”
Janet took his arm—“as primly and shyly as if she were no more than sixteen, having her first escort home,” Anne told the girls at Patty’s Place later on.
“Miss Shirley, permit me to introduce Mr. Douglas,” she said stiffly.
Mr. Douglas nodded and said, “I was looking at you in prayer-meeting, miss, and thinking what a nice little girl you were.”
Such a speech from ninety-nine people out of a hundred would have annoyed Anne bitterly; but the way in which Mr. Douglas said it made her feel that she had received a very real and pleasing compliment. She smiled appreciatively at him and dropped obligingly behind on the moonlit road.
So Janet had a beau! Anne was delighted. Janet would make a paragon of a wife—cheery, economical, tolerant, and a very queen of cooks. It would be a flagrant waste on Nature’s part to keep her a permanent old maid.
“John Douglas asked me to take you up to see his mother,” said Janet the next day. “She’s bed-rid a lot of the time and never goes out of the house. But she’s powerful fond of company and always wants to see my boarders. Can you go up this evening?”
Anne assented; but later in the day Mr. Douglas called on his mother’s behalf to invite them up to tea on Saturday evening.
“Oh, why didn’t you put on your pretty pansy dress?” asked Anne, when they left home. It was a hot day, and poor Janet, between her excitement and her heavy black cashmere dress, looked as if she were being broiled alive.
“Old Mrs. Douglas would think it terrible frivolous and unsuitable, I’m afraid. John likes that dress, though,” she added wistfully.