“Tavia!” Nat whispered still holding out his hands. “Do—do you forgive me?”
“Now! is this a time or a place to talk things over?” she demanded apparently inclined to keep up the wall. “We are castaway in the snow. Bo-o-ooh! we’re likely to freeze here——”
“I don’t care if I do freeze,” he declared recklessly. “You’ve got to answer me here and now, Tavia.”
“Have I?” with a toss of her head. “Who are you to command me, I’d like to know?” Then with sudden seriousness and a flood of crimson in her face that fairly glorified Tavia Travers: “How about that request I told you your mother must make, Nat? I meant it.”
“See here! See here!” cried the young man, tearing off his gloves and dashing them into the snow while he struggled to open his bearskin coat and then the coat beneath.
From an inner pocket he drew forth a letter and opened it so she could read.
“See!” Nat cried. “It’s from mother. She wrote it to me while I was in Boston—before old Ned’s telegram came. See what she says here—second paragraph, Tavia.”
The girl read the words with a little intake of her breath:
“And, my dear boy, I know that you have quarreled in some way and for some reason with our pretty, impetuous Tavia. Do not risk your own happiness and hers, Nathaniel, through any stubbornness. Tavia is worth breaking one’s pride for. She is the girl I hope to see you marry—nobody else in this wide world could so satisfy me as your wife.”
That was as far as Tavia could read, for her eyes were misty. She hung her head like a child and whispered, as Nat approached: