“She won’t carry a very heavy load, Miss Polly,” he remarked, drawing alongside. Polly calmly climbed into the skiff, taking her seat in the stern.
“I can’t sleep all the time, sister of mine,” she protested, once she was comfortably established, “much as I should like to accommodate my family and friends by the relief from my society. And as for my being too heavy for your canoe, Billy Webster, I don’t weigh nearly so much as Mollie. So if you think both of us too heavy, she might as well get out and give me a chance. You have been around this lake with her at least a dozen times already this afternoon. Besides, I really have to be allowed to remain somewhere.”
Plainly Mollie’s withdrawal from the scene had no place in Billy’s calculations, for without further argument he moved out toward the middle of the pond.
CHAPTER XX—Two Engagements
Ten minutes more must have passed before Betty decided to return to her friends. Yet during her short walk to the pine grove she was still oddly shy and nervous and in a mood wholly dissatisfied with herself. Why in the world did she so often behave coldly to Anthony Graham and with such an appearance of complete unfriendliness? There was nothing further from her own desire, for certainly he had an entire right to have transferred his affection to Meg! To show either anger or pique was small and unwomanly!
Never had there been definite understanding between Anthony and herself. Indeed she had always refused even to listen to any serious expression of his affection for her. Long ago there had been a single evening after her return from Germany, when together they had watched the moon go down behind Sunrise Hill, an evening which she had not been able to forget. Yet she had only herself to blame for the weakness, since if Anthony had forgotten, no girl should cherish such a memory alone.
Now here was an opportunity for proving both her courage and pride. With the thought of her old title of Princess, Betty’s cheeks had flamed. How very far she had always been from living up to its real meaning. Yet she must hurry on and cease this absurd and selfish fashion of thinking of herself. A cloud had come swiftly up out of the east and in a few moments there would be a sudden July downpour. Often a brief storm of wind and rain closed an unusually warm day in the New Hampshire hills.
Under no circumstances must Polly suffer. Only a week before had Mrs. Wharton been persuaded to leave Polly in their charge when she and Mollie had both promised to take every possible care of her.
Suddenly Betty began running so that she arrived quite breathless at her destination. Her face was flushed, and from under the blue ribbon her hair had escaped and was curling in red-brown tendrils over her white forehead. Then at the entrance to the group of pines, before she has even become aware of Polly’s disappearance, Anthony Graham had unexpectedly caught hold of both her hands.
“Betty, you must listen to me,” he demanded. “No, I can’t let you go until I have spoken, for if I do you will find some reason for escaping me altogether as you have been doing these many months. You must know I love you and that I have cared for no one else since the hour of our first meeting. Always I have thought of you, always worked to be in some small way worthy even of daring to say I love you. Yet something has come between us during this past year and it is only fair that you should tell me what it is. I do not expect you to love me, Betty, but once you were my friend and I could at least tell you my hopes and fears. Is it that you are engaged to some one else and take this way of letting me know?”