“Perhaps I will, if when the time arrives you still wish for two.”
The clock was striking eleven when Dora quitted the apartment of the Misses Verner, but late as it was Johnnie was waiting for her by her door. He had heard the glad news from his father, and he caught Dora round the neck, exclaiming:
“I know, I’ve heard,—the governor told me. You are,—you are my mother. I never was so happy in my life, was you?”
They were now in Dora’s room, where the gas was burning, disclosing to Johnnie a face which made him start with fear, it was so unnaturally white.
“Auntie,” he exclaimed, bending over her, as, reclining upon the bed, she buried her head in the pillows, “what makes you so white, when I’m so glad, and father, too? I never saw him so pleased. Why, the tears danced in his eyes as he told me, while I blubbered like a calf; and you are crying, too, but not as father did, or I. O my! what is it? This is so different. Auntie, Auntie, you are in a fit!” and Johnnie gazed awe-struck upon the little form which shook convulsively as Dora tried to smother her deep sobs. “I’ll go for father,” Johnnie continued, and then Dora looked up, telling him to stay there where he was.
“But, Auntie, what is the matter?” he asked. “Do girls always cry so when they are engaged? What makes your tears run so like rivers, and so big? It must hurt awfully to be engaged. O dear, dear! I am crying, too!” and then the excited boy wound both arms around Dora’s neck and drew her head upon his shoulder, where it lay, while Dora’s tears literally ran in rivers down her cheeks.
But the weeping did her good, and she grew very quiet at last, and listened while Johnnie told her how good he was going to be, and how he would influence the others to be good, too.
“We will all be so happy,” he said, “that mother, if she could look at us, would be so glad. Father will read to us winter nights, or you’ll play chess with him and sing to us youngsters, and summers we’ll go to lots of places, and you shall have heaps of handsome dresses. You’re not so tall as mother, and it won’t take so many yards, so you can have more. I mean to buy one anyhow, with some money I’ve laid up. I guess it will be red silk, like Jessie’s, and you’ll have it made low-neck, like hers, with little short sleeves. You’ve got nice, pretty arms, whiter than Jessie’s.”
Remembering how much his mother had thought of dress, Johnnie naturally concluded it to be the Open Sesame to every woman’s heart, and so talked on until she sent him away, for she would rather be alone with her own tumultuous thoughts.