Mamma had smiled a funny, contented smile. Mamma was different. Her face had left off being reproachful and disapproving. It had got back the tender, adorable look it used to have when you were little. She hated Maurice Jourdain, yet you felt that in some queer way she loved you because of him. You loved her more because of Maurice Jourdain.
The engagement happened suddenly at the end of August. You knew it would happen some day; but you thought of it as happening to-morrow or the day after rather than to-day. At three o'clock you started for a walk, never knowing how you might come back, and at five you found yourself sitting at tea in the orchard, safe. He would slouch along beside you, for miles, morosely. You thought of his mind swinging off by itself, shining where you couldn't see it. You broke loose from him to run tearing along the road, to jump water-courses, to climb trees and grin down at him through the branches. Then he would wake up from his sulking. Sometimes he would be pleased and sometimes he wouldn't. The engagement happened just after he had not been pleased at all.
She could still hear his voice saying "What do you do it for?" and her own answering.
"You must do something."
"You needn't dance jigs on the parapets of bridges."
They slid through the gap into the fields. In the narrow path he stopped suddenly and turned.
"How can a child like you care for a man like me?" Mocking her sing-song.
He stooped and kissed her. She shut her eyes so as not to see the puffiness.
"Will you marry me, Mary?"