"I always find," said Mrs. Vincent, unlocking her beautiful lips, and looking like a woman in a legend, with her gray hair and high cheek bones, "that the summer is a time for thinking more than talking."
"You are right, Mrs. Vincent; don't you agree, Miss Margaret?"
"I don't know," Margaret answered, carelessly. "The summer is lovely, of course; it always seems as if the world had rolled itself up a little bit nearer to heaven—"
"I thought you didn't believe in any such place," said Hannah, sharply.
Mrs. Vincent looked at her younger daughter with fond eyes. "One's heart sometimes believes one thing and one's head another," she said. But Margaret ate her tart in silence, and Mr. Garratt, still weighing the chances of his future, followed her example.
XXI
The Sunday tea was over. Hannah had successfully monopolized Mr. Garratt all the afternoon. He was becoming desperate. "She would drive a fellow mad," he thought; "why, the way she tramps into that kitchen with the tea things is enough to send any one a mile off her track. I should get the staggers if I married her; besides, she wouldn't let one call one's soul one's own by the time she was forty." He looked towards the door of the best parlor. Mrs. Vincent and Margaret were there; he got up and went in boldly. "May I venture to ask for a little music?" he asked.