“Always,” he assented.
“Only growing better and better all the time, Norton. I feel as if I could never be good enough to show how thankful I am that you love me. Do you think I ever can?”
“Hush,” he said, frowning. “You must not talk in that way. I’m only a stupid, commonplace fellow at best, not half good enough for you. You’ll have to make me better.”
“Oh, Norton!” she protested.
“Ah, never mind now, dear! You haven’t put on my ring yet, Milly—remember it is not to come off until I have to put it on the next time—do you know when that will be? When we are married, when you are mine, really and forever. May that day soon come! Give me your hand now, dear, and let me ‘ring your finger with the round hoop of gold,’ as you were reading to me last night.”
“There is someone coming,” said Milly nervously. She stood up as the shadow of a parasol touched the roses, and met the gaze of the Episcopal clergyman’s wife, as she stopped to rest, panting a little, by the garden wall. She was a thin woman in a black and white print gown, and with a black lace bonnet trimmed with bunches of artificial violets surmounting her sallow face.
“Oh, it’s you, is it, Milly?” she asked with a kindly inflection of her rather sharp voice. “And Mr. Edwards, too, of course. Well, good morning to you both. Isn’t it a perfect day! A little hot in the sun though. It always tires me to walk up this hill; I have to stop a moment here to get my breath. I suppose you’re not going to the funeral, either of you? No, it’s not a bit necessary, but I fancied you might like to see the service performed as it should be for once.”
“I did not know anyone had died,” said Milly.
“My dear, it’s only a little boy from the poorhouse. His relatives—such as he had—are not able to bury him, and Mr. Preston did want to show the parish what a properly conducted funeral was like. You know what a frightfully bigoted place this is! We had to give up candles altogether, Mr. Edwards. It fairly makes me shiver at times—the ignorance! I wonder—I do wonder, they don’t knock the cross off the spire some day, because it’s a symbol. I wonder they even have a church, instead of a circus tent!”
“Oh, Mrs. Preston!” remonstrated Milly. She glanced sideways nervously at Norton, who was picking a rose to pieces with an imperturbable expression.