All that day, Betty was in a dream. She knew very well the answer she would give Fortescue, but suddenly she looked into the stern face of Life, and saw what those dreams meant. How could she leave Holly Lodge and the Colonel and Aunt Tulip and Uncle Cesar and Kettle, and the young chickens, just hatched? Life was a practical affair with Betty, but, alas, sentiment and emotion were strong within her. She did not know how the next twenty-four hours passed, except that her eyes continually swept the narrow lane that led to the little gate of Holly Lodge. She would rather see Fortescue in the garden, and therefore dressed herself in her little pale yellow gown, and put on a great straw hat, trimmed with little yellow buds and green leaves, that was worthy of a dryad. The air was warm and soft at midday, and Betty was walking up and down the garden path, watching, watching, watching, and at last, just as she had turned her back to the gate and was walking the length of the little garden path, Fortescue was at her side. He looked so bronzed, so soldierly, so much the man, that Betty gave a little gasp of delight. There was a tall box-hedge in the little old garden which screened the walk from the windows of the house, so that Fortescue could take Betty’s hand and be unseen as they walked up and down in the pleasant spring noon. Then Fortescue told her all: that he had received his unexpected orders and must go, that it wrung his heart to leave her, but that he was hers forever, and that though his body might be in the far Northwest, his heart and soul would be at Holly Lodge. Betty’s eyes made answer to Fortescue, and her lips spoke the winged words that gave her to her lover. A pair of robins beginning housekeeping in the grape arbor at the end of the walk sang and trilled rapturously as they watched the lovers.
“BUT IF YOU LOVE ME——”
There could be no question of their being married immediately, as Fortescue would be on the wing for the next four months, and he knew nothing of his new station or duties, except that both were trying and the conditions unsuited to a woman. But later, after he had seen what the conditions were, perhaps he could take Betty with him.
“I am asking a great deal of you, Betty,” he said. “The wife of a junior officer has to go from place to place, to be uprooted constantly. It is true that I am lucky in having money enough to make it as easy as it can be made, still, it is hard, hard, all the same. But if you love me——”
Betty said one little word which settled that point, though her eyes were grave.
“How can I leave my grandfather?” she asked suddenly.
“You need not leave him,” promptly replied Fortescue. “We can carry the old gentleman and the whole outfit around with us.”
