"I believe you, Jim," she returned finally. "I believe you'd play fair with me and with Captain Madden even if you loathed the idea of my caring for him. Don't worry, old man. I promise this is the end. But, please, would you mind if I cried a while? No one is paying any attention to us and I think I'd like to very much."
Without waiting for permission, Jack's shoulders shook, and she covered her face with her hands. But a few seconds later Jim sighed so miserably that Jack slipped one of her hands inside his and held it close.
"I am not crying because my heart is broken, Jim dear," she explained; "I think I am crying because I am ashamed of myself. Sometimes I wonder how many lessons it will take before I learn not to be so self-willed. I have made things so hard for Ruth and for the other girls. Yet I believed what Captain Madden told me; I thought people were prejudiced against him just because he was poor. And I hate that. So when Ruth and Frank said such horrid things I told him I would marry him if you would give your consent. And, oh Jim, I have been so afraid lately—"
Jack began crying softly again.
"Been so afraid, poor little girl! If you only knew how I dreaded telling you this, I haven't had a good night's sleep in two weeks, and waiting for you to arrive in London nearly broke my nerve." Jim Colter probably had not shed any tears in almost twenty years, yet he looked perilously on the verge of them now.
Jack pulled at his coat sleeve uncertainly. "But Jim, dear, you don't know what I have been afraid of! I have been afraid you would discover that Captain Madden was all right and that I would then have to marry him. I had given him my word. It would not have been honest to go back on it. You see, when we were in Rome I did believe I cared for him. He was awfully kind and interesting and different from any one I had ever known. Then I suppose I was flattered in thinking a so much older, wiser man could care for a stupid girl like me. And Ruth and Frank were dreadfully dictatorial. But since we left Rome, I've been thinking—I feel I have not been doing anything else but think. And I realized that I did not really love Captain Madden. I felt as if I should die if he took me away from my family. Still I didn't know just what to do. I was so frightened, Jim, until I saw you there at Charing Cross."
Jim Colter took off his big western hat. The English sky of a June day can be a very lovely thing—soft fleecy clouds, floating over a surface of translucent blue. Jim looked up into it. "I thank Thee, Lord," he whispered reverently, and then, stooping over, kissed Jack.
The next moment he was up on his feet. And though he failed to electrify Kew Gardens by giving his celebrated cowboy yell, he waved his sombrero and the yell apparently took place inside him.
"Come on, Jack, let's do something quick to celebrate or I'm liable to bust with gladness!" he exclaimed. "This is a right pretty park we're in. I hear it's one of the most famous on the map, with every known tree growing inside it. Wouldn't you like me to buy it for you, or maybe you can think of some other little remembrance?"
Jack hung on to his arm and the man and girl started off on their sight-seeing expedition together, both feeling as though they were treading on air instead of the velvet softness of the English turf.