“It seems very long in coming sometimes,” she murmured, then suddenly and in a timid voice she said: “Dad dear!—do you know—can you imagine—that Mr. Craig has asked me to marry him?”
Dr. Maynard smiled.
“Oh, he has, has he? Well, I’m not surprised! And you,—what did you say to him?”
“I said ‘No,’” she replied. “I asked him not to go on with it—but—but—of course—I feel he has done me a great honour.”
The old scholar looked meditative.
“Um—um—perhaps he has—and perhaps he hasn’t! We men are apt to think too much of ourselves, and you women are prone to think too much of us! Craig is a clever fellow—but—well!—he’s a leetle old for you, my pretty one!—just a leetle worn and battered in the battle of life to be the husband of a small fairy like you! So that the ‘honour’ of his asking you to marry him doesn’t seem so great to my mind as the ‘honour’ of your accepting him—if you did!—which you won’t!”
“Which I won’t!” and she slipped a loving arm round his neck. “You’re sure of that, Dad? How do you know?”
He put one hand under her chin and turned her sweet face up to his own.
“How do I know?” he echoed, and laughed as he spoke. “Why, because you’re not in love with him! God bless my soul! Do you think I’m such an old noodle as not to know when a girl’s in love?—and my own little girlie too! There, there! You can’t play bo-peep with me! He has proposed to you—well and good!—it’s a bit of a cheek on his part, but never mind that!—and you’ve thought it might be a good thing for you to be established in life as the wife of a distinguished Oxford man,—but—see here, my child!” And his bantering tone changed to one of earnest and tender gravity. “We are living in queer times—this old world has got a shock straight to the heart in this war, and men and women are drifting away from the faith of their forefathers—the faith and right principle which made Britain ‘Great.’ Don’t go with the fatal ‘swim,’ Sylvia!—it’s bound to end in a whirlpool of trouble. Keep to the straight lines of life,—and one of those straight lines is love. Love, my little one!—nothing but real, pure love can make a woman happy in marriage.”
Sylvia nestled close to him.