“I shall have to unless I stop up my ears, since you stop up the doorway.” Nance was very pale and trembling. Two years of suffering could not be done away with in a moment and the girl had surely suffered.
“Couldn’t we sit down and let me tell you?”
“We could!”
Andy eagerly directed Nance to the sofa, but she sedately seated herself in a small isolated sewing rocker. Andy accepted the amendment and placed his chair as near to hers as the frigid atmosphere around her permitted.
“Before I explain I must apologize. I would have done it the very day after that awful row we had, the very moment after it, if I had not thought you hated me.”
“And now?”
“And now I am going to apologize and explain, whether you hate me or not. I could do it lots better if you would let me hold your hand while I am doing it,” but Nance drew Molly’s knitting from a bag hung on the back of the chair and declared her hands were otherwise occupied. Molly had reached the purling end of a sleeveless sweater and no doubt would be glad of Nance’s expert assistance.
“Nance, there never has been any other woman in my life but you, you and my mother. You know perfectly well from the time I met you, when I was at Exmoor College and you were here at Wellington, that you were the only girl in the world for me. I had a kind of notion in my fool brain that I was going to be the only man in the world for you. When we were engaged I thought I was, but when I realized that Dr. Flint was paying you such devoted attention, at your home constantly——”
“My father’s physician!”
“Yes, I know,—but, honey, you see you were way up there in Vermont and I was down in New York and I was hungry for you all the time, and when your father died I thought you would pick right up and come to me—I knew nothing of your mother’s determination to stay with you—nothing of her illness—nothing but that you were staying in the same town with Flint and I must go back to New York. You did not tell me.”