“It doesn’t seem to me a particularly logical conclusion, sweetheart!” the Captain said, smiling. “Personally I feel that I ought to be rewarded at once, but I won’t make any promises one way or another until I have met your brother and heard his views. Don’t worry yourself, you shan’t do anything that you feel to be wrong, but I don’t despair of finding a solution of the difficulty. When it is an alternative between that and waiting for you for three years, Bridgie, I shall be very, very resourceful!”
“I don’t know what you can do. It’s no use suggesting a housekeeper—the boys would not hear of it, and she’d be destroyed in a week with the life they would lead her!” So argued Bridgie, but she was willing to be convinced, and too happy in the present to feel much concern for the future.
The weight of depression which had lain on her heart despite her brave cheeriness of manner was lifted once and for ever now that she was convinced of Dick’s faithful love, and it seemed impossible that she could ever be more content than at this moment. Until now almost all the joys of her life had come from an unselfish pleasure in the good fortune of others, but this wonderful new happiness was her very own, hers and Dick’s, and she could hardly believe that it was true, and not a wonderful dream.
Mrs Wallace’s letter had conveyed an invitation to stay for the night, so the lovers had two days to sit and talk together in the lovely summer garden before returning to give an account of themselves in Rutland Road.
Jack was not prepared to see a stranger accompanying his sister, but he welcomed him with Irish heartiness, and guessed how the land lay at the first glance at Bridgie’s face. So did Pat; so did Miles; but they concealed their suspicions with admirable tact, and talked persistently through the evening meal with intent to relieve the embarrassment which was so evidently experienced by the hostess.
Poor Bridgie was painfully conscious of the enormity of her conduct as she looked from one to the other of her three big brothers. Jack’s manner was nervous and excited. Poor fellow! he was evidently dreading the explanations which were in store. Pat was looking pale; he grew so fast that he needed constant care. Miles kept handing her the mustard with sympathetic effusion; he had a heart of gold and could be led with a word, but it must be the right word, and woe to the housekeeper of the future if she tried to rule by force! She smiled at him with wistful apology, and Miles patted her hand affectionately under the tablecloth.
It was a pity when a sensible girl like Bridgie made an idiot of herself by falling in love, but they all seemed to do it sooner or later, and there was no use making a fuss, Master Miles told himself resignedly. She seemed to have met this Captain Victor years ago, and to have corresponded with him in India, but she had never mentioned his name at home. How strange to know that Bridgie had had an interest beyond her own brothers and sisters! Miles felt mildly aggrieved, but consoled himself by the reflection that the Captain seemed a decent sort of fellow with plenty to say for himself. He had been on active service twice already, and though he refused details of manslaughter, gave such a graphic account of tiger-shooting expeditions as made Miles’s lips water, and aroused rebellious repinings at his own hard lot in living in a miserable suburb where the only sport to be obtained was the tracking of a few superfluous cats!
When dinner was over, the two boys discreetly lingered behind while their elders retired to the drawing-room, and Bridgie grew rosy red with embarrassment as the door closed behind them.
“We wanted to tell you, Jack—” she began nervously. “I would have told you before, only there was nothing to tell. There isn’t now! At least, I mean, it won’t be for a long, long time, dear. Not until you don’t want me any more.”
“Better let me try, Bridgie!” cried the Captain, laughing. He put his hand on her shoulder in a proudly possessive fashion, and looked Jack full in the face. “She is dreadfully afraid of what you will say, and ashamed of herself for daring to think of anything but her home duties. It doesn’t seem to strike her that she has a duty to me too, when I have been thinking of her for the last three years. I must explain to you, O’Shaughnessy, that a friend wrote to tell me that your eldest sister was about to be married to a man called Hilliard, and by an unfortunate coincidence Bridgie herself had vaguely referred to coming changes in her last letter, so I believed the report, and we have mutually been eating our hearts, and believing the other to be faithless. There was no engagement, you must understand, but I made up my mind about her the first day we met, and she now acknowledges that she ran away because she was afraid I might interfere with her home claims. You see, I have already spared her to you for three good years, so I think it is my turn now! My friends will tell you that I have been miserably dull and surly, and for their sakes alone I feel I ought to make a stand.”