Then the girl paled, and bent closer over her work. “Resign!” she gasped.
“Yes, resign. I admit I haven’t enough money to live without a salary, though I would like to stay here forever.” Wesley spoke with fervor, his eyes on the girl.
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t.”
“I most certainly would, but I can’t run in debt, and—I want to marry some day—like other young men—and I must earn.”
The girl bent her head lower. “Why don’t you resign and go away, and get—married, if you want to?”
“Fanny!”
He bent over her. His lips touched her hair. “You know,” he began—then came a voice like the legendary sword which divides lovers for their best temporal and spiritual good.
“Dinner is ready and the peas are getting cold,” said Mrs. Solomon Black.
Then it happened that Wesley Elliot, although a man and a clergyman, followed like a little boy the large woman with the water-waves through the weedage of the pastoral garden, and the girl sat weeping awhile from mixed emotions of anger and grief. Then she took a little puff from her bag, powdered her nose, straightened her hair and, also, went home, bag in hand, to her own noon dinner.