“Well—I always liked you, ’Raine,” he forced himself into saying. “And it’s mighty sensible—I guess your father will say yes.”
“He may think a marriage for—spite,” she added half inaudibly, “isn’t right, but I’ll marry you anyway, Dan,” this to his surprise.
“It hurts to love so hard, doesn’t it?” he asked impersonally. “I thought she was only joking about the fair—but I guess if she knows her own mind, I can know mine!” Determination to turn the tables on Thurley and the town surged to the front. “It’s nobody’s business whether I marry you to-morrow—I’m going right on with the plans for the house and the ring—and all of it! I guess we can learn to be happy in our own way,” he touched her hair gently. “You’re an awful good little girl to care enough not to be jealous of Thurley. I don’t think you’ll ever be sorry we married ... sometimes it takes a funny sort of thing—like my being engaged to Thurley, you know,” he stumbled over the situation in poorly chosen words, “and her wanting a career and leaving me, to make other people happy!” He tried to laugh, lovable, broken-hearted boy, and Lorraine tried to laugh, too, lovable girl whose broken heart was beginning to mend. “And here I am marrying the same little girl I played with—so here’s our pledge to be happy—no matter what.”
To Lorraine’s father, who questioned the sudden courtship, he said with Birge aggression, “Lorraine loves me and she’ll never marry any other fellow. I guess you know all there is to my being engaged to Thurley, sir. I’m sorry it ever got into the paper, but that’s done and there is no taking it back. I loved Thurley, but I’d be a fool to mope my life away like Miss Clergy did because a girl wanted to sing instead of be my wife. After all, it’s not a matter of life and death.” He wondered if the Reverend McDowell knew how loud his heart was thumping, great irregular thumps, each one trying to say in its dumb fashion, “Oh, Thurley-dear!” But he finished bravely, “I’m making plans to build and I guess you know I’ll take good care of ’Raine. If you’ve any other objection to me, I’d like to hear it.”
“Nothing but the haste, my lad,” the older man said slowly. “My child would never marry another man—but yourself—this ‘heart on the rebound’—”
“I want ’Raine!” Dan cried, striking the chair arm with the flat of his palm. “And I’m going to marry her. I’ll wait until the house is built, if you think it best, but she’s promised to marry me and she won’t change.”
“Then why bother me at all?” Lorraine’s father could not refrain from saying. “It was never a Birge habit, as I recall it.”
After Dan left the parsonage study to tell Lorraine her father approved, but they would wait until Fairview was ready for occupancy, and diligently measured her ring finger, finding it two sizes smaller than Thurley’s, he left her, dazed with joy yet trying to still the something which whispered,
“He loves Thurley; you must always be content with crumbs.”
Lorraine began counting over the things in the long-closed hope chest and planning to crowd it to overflowing. What mattered it, if they were not married for a year or two? Was she not “bespoken” to Dan Birge? And Lorraine was quite positive she would not change her mind.