But this, though it was her own formula, did not satisfy Rose. ‘I am sure you could tell me a great deal more if you only would,’ she cried; ‘what did he say? Now, that you can’t help remembering; you must know what he said. Did he tell you he was in love with you, or ask you straight off to marry him? You can’t have forgotten that—it is not so very long ago.’
‘But, Rosie, I could not tell you. It is not the words, it is not anything that could be repeated. A woman should hear that for the first time,’ said Anne, with shy fervour, turning away her head to hide the blush, ‘when it is said to herself.’
‘A woman! Then you call yourself a woman now? I am only a girl; is that one of the things that show?’ asked Rose, gravely, in pursuit of her inquiry. ‘Well, then, you ought surely to let me know what kind of a thing it is. Are you so very fond of him as people say in books? are you always thinking about him? Anne, it is dreadfully mean of you to keep it all to yourself. Tell me one thing: when he said it first, did he go down upon his knees?’
‘What nonsense you are talking!’ said Anne, with a burst of laughter. Then there rose before her in sweet confusion a recollection of various moments in which Rose, always matter-of-fact, might have described her lover as on his knees. ‘You don’t know anything about it,’ she said, ‘and I can’t tell you anything about it. I don’t know myself, Rosie; it was all like a dream.’
‘It is you who are talking nonsense,’ said Rose. ‘How could it be like a dream? In a dream you wake up and it is all over; but it is not a bit over with you. Well, then, after, how did it feel, Anne? Was he always telling you you were pretty? Did he call you “dear,” and “love,” and all that sort of thing? It would be so very easy to tell me—and I do so want to know.’
‘Do you remember, Rose,’ said Anne, with a little solemnity, ‘how we used to wish for a brother? We thought we could tell him everything, and ask him questions as we never could do to papa, and yet it would be quite different from telling each other. He would know better; he would be able to tell us quantities of things, and yet he would understand what we meant too.’
‘I remember you used to wish for it,’ said Rose, honestly, ‘and that it would have been such a very good thing for the entail.’
‘Then,’ said Anne, with fervour, ‘it is a little like that—like what we thought that would be. One feels that one’s heart is running over with things to say. One wants to tell him everything, what happened when one was a little girl, and all the nonsense that has ever been in one’s mind. I told him even about that time I was shut up in the blue room, and how frightened I was. Everything! it does not matter if it is a trifle. One knows he will not think it a trifle. Exactly—at least almost exactly, like what it would be to have a brother—but yet with a difference too,’ Anne added, after a pause, blushing, she could scarcely tell why.
‘Ah!’ said Rose, with great perspicacity, ‘but the difference is just what I want to know.’
The oracle, however, made no response, and in despair the pertinacious questioner changed the subject a little. ‘If you will not tell me what he said, nor what sort of a thing it is, you may at least let me know one thing—what are you going to do?’