Annie looked at him, and her thin, sweet face seemed to have a luminous quality, like a crescent moon. Her look was enough.
“Then you do?” said Tom Reed.
“You have never needed to ask,” said Annie. “You knew.”
“I haven't been so sure as you think,” said Tom. “Suppose you come over here and sit beside me. You look miles away.”
Annie laughed and blushed, but she obeyed. She sat beside Tom and let him put his arm around her. She sat up straight, by force of her instinctive maidenliness, but she kissed him back when he kissed her.
“I haven't been so sure,” repeated Tom. “Annie darling, why have I been unable to see more of you? I have fairly haunted your house, and seen the whole lot of your sisters, especially Imogen, but somehow or other you have been as slippery as an eel. I have always asked for you, but you were always out or busy.”
“I have been very busy,” said Annie, evasively. She loved this young man with all her heart, but she had an enduring loyalty to her own flesh and blood.
Tom was very literal. “Say, Annie,” he blurted out, “I begin to think you have had to do most of the work over there. Now, haven't you? Own up.”
Annie laughed sweetly. She was so happy that no sense of injury could possibly rankle within her. “Oh, well,” she said, lightly. “Perhaps. I don't know. I guess housekeeping comes rather easier to me than to the others. I like it, you know, and work is always easier when one likes it. The other girls don't take to it so naturally, and they get very tired, and it has seemed often that I was the one who could hurry the work through and not mind.”
“I wonder if you will stick up for me the way you do for your sisters when you are my wife?” said Tom, with a burst of love and admiration. Then he added: “Of course you are going to be my wife, Annie? You know what this means?”