"I was in the front room, but perhaps we better drop down here so I can listen in case Mr. Heath should call."
"Anywhere you say. Wherever you are suits me."
"I'll just run in and put the screen round the fire and get my mending," Marcia replied a trifle uneasily.
"Let me go."
"No, indeed. You wait here. I'll be right back."
Left to himself, Eleazer smiled a smile of satisfaction.
The kitchen was warm, Marcia was alone and apparently not busy. Could circumstances be more propitious? Fortune certainly was with him. Today, this very afternoon, he would take his future in his hands and put to her the question he had so often determined to put.
Times without number he had mentally rehearsed what he meant to say. In fact he habitually fell into this intriguing dialogue whenever he had nothing else to occupy him. It commenced with a few preliminary observations concerning the weather, the springtime, the birds—the birds who would soon be mating. That was the keynote—mating. The rest followed very naturally. It was, Eleazer felt, a neat, in fact quite a poetic proposal.
He cleared his throat in preparation.