The dear old lady shook her head sorrowfully as she departed.
The afternoon soon ran away, as I turned to my bookcase for entertainment and had that beautiful ring to admire.
I heard them come in to tea, and I thought Harold had gone till I heard uncle Jay-Jay address him:
“Joe Archer told me you ran into a clothes-line on race-night, and ever since then mother has kept up a daddy of a fuss about ours. We’ve got props about a hundred feet long, and if you weren’t in the know you’d think we had a telegraph wire to old St Peter up above.”
I wondered what Harold thought of the woman he had selected as his future wife being shut up for being a “naughty girl”. The situation amused me exceedingly.
About nine o’clock he knocked at my window and said:
“Never mind, Syb. I tried to get you off, but it was no go. Old people often have troublesome straitlaced ideas. It will blow over by tomorrow.”
I did not answer; so he passed on with firm regular footfall, and presently I heard his horse’s hoof-beats dying away in the darkness, and the closing and locking of doors around me as the household retired for the night.
During the following fortnight I saw Harold a good many times at cricket-matches, hare-drives, and so forth, but he did not take any particular notice of me. I flirted and frolicked with my other young men friends, but he did not care. I did not find him an ardent or a jealous lover. He was so irritatingly cool and matter-of-fact that I wished for the three months to pass so that I might be done with him, as I had come to the conclusion that he was barren of emotion or passion of any kind.