She slipped to her knees beside his couch.
“Oh, my dear!” she said, between laughing and crying. “I've been meaning it—'all of it'—for ever so long. Only—only you won't ask me to marry you!”
“How can I? A lame man, and not even a rich one?”
“I believe,” said Audrey composedly, “we've argued both those points before—from a strictly impersonal point of view! Couldn't you—couldn't you get over your objection to coming to live with me at Greenacres, dear?”
Audrey always declared, afterwards, that it had required the most blatant encouragement on her part to induce Miles to propose to her, and that, but for the war—which convinced him that he was of no use to any one else—he never would have done so.
Presumably she was able to supply the requisite stimulus, for when the Lavender Lady joined them later on in the afternoon, she found herself called upon to perform that function of sheer delight to every old maid of the right sort—namely, to bestow her blessing on a pair of newly betrothed lovers.
Sara received the news the next morning, and though naturally, by contrast, it seemed to add a keener edge to her own grief, she was still able to rejoice whole-heartedly over this little harvesting of joy which her two friends had snatched from amid the world's dreadful harvesting of pain and sorrow.
By the same post as the radiant letters from Miles and Audrey came one from Elisabeth Durward. She wrote distractedly.
“Tim is determined to volunteer,” ran her letter. “I can't let him go, Sara. He is my only son, and I don't see why he should be claimed from me by this horrible war. I have persuaded him to wait until he has seen you. That is all he will consent to. So will you come and do what you can to dissuade him? There is a cord by which you could hold him if you would.”
A transient smile crossed Sara's face as she pictured Tim gravely consenting to await her opinion on the matter. He knew—none better!—what it would be, and, without doubt, he had merely agreed to the suggestion in the hope that her presence might ease the strain and serve to comfort his mother a little.