“I have had some reason,” Lucy said, with a terrible eagerness of self-defence. “I have, mother.”
“What?”
“One day, the first year he came, I was standing at the gate beside that flowering-almond bush, and it was all in flower, and he came past and he looked at the bush and at me, then at the bush again, and he said, ‘How beautiful that is!’ But, mother, he meant me.”
“What else?”
“You remember he called here once.”
“Yes, Lucy, to ask you to sing at the school entertainment.”
“Mother, it was for more than that. You did not hear him speak at the door. He said, ‘I shall count on you; you cannot disappoint me.’ You did not hear his voice, mother.”
“What else, Lucy?”
“Once, one night last winter, when I was coming home from the post-office, it was after dark, and he walked way to the house with me, and he told me a lot about himself. He told me how all alone in the world he was, and how hard it was for a man to have nobody who really belonged to him in the wide world, and when he said good-night at the gate he held my hand—quite a while; he did, mother.”
“What else, Lucy?”