“But it has gone, and that’s the trouble. I have decided that I must go back in September.”
Frances hesitated, and then said bravely, “We shall be very sorry to have you go.”
“That makes it all the harder,” groaned Champney, rising and joining Frances. “In fact, I hate so to leave you” (“you” can be plural or singular) “over here that—that I want you to go back with me. Will you?”
“Why, that is for mama and papa to settle,” remarked Frances, artfully dodging the question, though perfectly understanding it.
“This isn’t to be settled by fathers and mothers. My dar—my—I want you to go—because you have become so dear to me. I want to tell you—to tell you how I have grown to love you in these months. How happy you can make me by a single word. I—you—once you told me you were not ‘my dear child.’ Oh, Frances, won’t you be my dearest love?”
“If you want me to be,” acceded Frances.
⁂
One of the simplest laws of natural philosophy is that a thing descends more easily than it ascends. Yet it took those two over four times longer to come down than it had taken them to go up,—which proves that love is superior to all the laws of gravity; though it is not meant to suggest by this that it has aught to do with levity. From among a variety of topics with which they beguiled this slow descent the following sentences are selected:
“I can’t believe it yet,” marvelled Champney. “It doesn’t seem as if our happiness could have depended on such a small chance.”
“What chance?”