A moment later, swaying on his crutches, he had laid both hands on her shoulders and, his eyes alight, was gazing deeply into hers.
"Oh, Bab, do you mean it?"
"Yes, dear," she returned courageously. "I'll marry you when you want."
XIX
April now was drawing on toward May; and after the dance, the first within its walls for years, life in the Beeston house resumed itself much as it had been before. The family, at the end of a fortnight, was to go out to the Beeston place on Long Island and once they were there settled for the summer, David meant to announce the engagement. Meanwhile Bab's mind was so full of it that there was little room there for anything else.
Her decision to marry David had changed her mental attitude entirely. With the past and its events she was determined she would not distress herself. In this she included Varick. She no longer pondered, either, those happenings, still unexplained, that so long had bewildered her. It was to the future she looked. Varick had gone out of her life. David was the one she must think about.
The days slipped by, every one, it seemed to Bab, fuller for her than the one before. And it was to David that all this was due. There was not an hour when his every thought, every consideration, was not directed toward her. Bab vividly perceived the depth of his feeling for her.
In the time that preceded the departure for Long Island a feverish happiness seemed to animate him. He hovered about her as if he resented the loss even of a single moment of her company, and Bab was far from objecting to this. David's companionship always had allured her; his thoughtfulness, his consideration must have endeared him to anyone. Besides, David's happiness somehow was infectious. When she was with him her spirits leaped contagiously. More and more in those few days Bab learned to appreciate how companionable he really was.