“Momsey, I’ve something to say to you.”
“Well, come over here, dear. I want to hook you up; your dress is all open in the back. I wish you would be more careful. Isn’t it time for you to go to your lessons?”
“I’m not going to study any more, mother.”
“My dear child, what do you mean?”
“I’ve decided that I want to get married,” said Tina—“to Francis.” A wave of colour rose suddenly over her lovely face, and she made an annoyed motion as if to brush it away. “Annette knows I want to marry him. I wanted her to tell you, but she said you wouldn’t like it unless I told you myself. So now I’m telling you. And I hope you won’t mind very much, for Francis and I will never care for any one else.”
“Oh, my dear child!” said Mrs. Malison. Mother and daughter looked at each other with the same expression of dominant will. “This is, of course, nonsense, Tina.” She braced herself as one does against a coming blow so appalling that one cannot stop to fear the weight of it; all one’s energies must be used to fend it off.
“It distresses me to hear you talk like this; you don’t mean it—you don’t know what it means; but it distresses me, Tina!”
“There, I knew you’d say that!” cried Tina in poignant remonstrance. She dropped into her favourite attitude of hunched up shoulders, her lips set in scornful bitterness. “Every one lectures me and scolds me—nobody wants me to do anything I like except Francis. Even Robert lectures me, though he’s such a muff with Elinor! I know none of you like Francis. I know you all despise him, but he’s a thousand times nicer to me than any one else is. He likes me to have everything I want.”
“Oh, Tina!” said poor Mrs. Malison, her heart pierced with twenty daggers. “Of course, I’m not saying—— If you still care for him in a couple of years, then, perhaps, your father and I may consider it. But you can’t know your own mind now, my darling. You have seen nothing of life; marriage is a very serious thing.”
“Then I don’t want to wait until I know about life, if it’s as horrid as you say it is!” said Tina, hotly. “I don’t want to wait until I change my mind. I’ll never change it. I made Francis stay away on purpose all last month to see what it would be like—and I hated it—and so did he.” Tina’s voice had the ring of a passionate conviction, her blue eyes had a sombre depth of melancholy in them. “Why do we have to wait for years and years like Annette and Joseph when it isn’t necessary? Mother, why can’t Francis and I be married? My grandmother was married at sixteen.”