“Where’s Jos? Where’s Jos?”
“Good gracious, how should I know? There, be quiet,” in pretended anger, though she liked it well enough. “What’s come to you? If you must know, she’s moping in her room. It’s where I find her most times when she’s not catching cold in the gardenhouse, and her father’s noticed it at last. He’s in a pretty stew about her, and if you ask me, I don’t think that she’s ever got over that night.”
“I’ll cure her!” Arthur cried in a glow, and he gave Miss Peacock another twirl.
But he had no opportunity of trying his cure that evening, for Jos, when she came downstairs, kept close to her father, and it was not until after breakfast on the morrow that he saw her go into the garden through the side-door, a relic of the older house that had once stood there. To frame it a stone arch of Tudor date had been filled in, and on either side of this, outlined in stone on the brick wall, was a pointed window of three lights. But Arthur’s thoughts as he followed Jos into the garden were far from such dry-as-dust matters. The reaction after fear, the assurance that all was well, intoxicated him, and in a glow of spirits that defied the November day he strode down the walk under boughs that half-bare, and over leaves that half-shrivelled, owned alike the touch of autumn. He caught sight of a skirt on the raised walk at the farther end of the garden and he made for it, bounding up the four steps with a light foot and a lover’s haste. A handsome young fellow, with a conquering air!
Jos was leaning on the wall, a shawl about her shoulders, her eyes bent on the mill and the Thirty Acres; and her presence in that place on that not too cheerful morning, and her pensive stillness, might have set him wondering, had he given himself time to think. But he was full of his purpose, he viewed her only as she affected it, and he saw nothing except what he wished to see. When, hearing his footsteps, she turned, her color did not rise—and that too might have told him something. But had he spared this a thought, it would only have been to think that her color would rise soon enough when he spoke.
“Jos!” he cried, while some paces still separated them. “I’ve seen your father! And I’ve spoken to him!” He waved his hand as one proclaiming a victory.
But what victory? Jos was as much in the dark as if he had never paid court to her in those far-off days. “Is anything the matter?” she asked, and she turned as if she would go back to the house.
But he barred the way. “Nothing,” he said. “Why should there be? On the contrary, dear. Don’t I tell you that I’ve spoken to the Squire? And he says that I may speak to you.”
“To me?” She looked at him candidly, with no inkling in her mind of what he meant.
“Yes! My dear girl, don’t you understand? He has given me leave to speak to you—to ask you to be my wife?” And as her lips parted and she gazed at him in astonishment, he took possession of her hand. The position was all in favor of a lover, for the parapet was behind her, and she could not escape if she would; while the ordeal through which he had passed gave this lover an ardor that he might otherwise have lacked. “Jos, dear,” he continued, looking into her eyes, “I’ve waited—waited patiently, knowing that it was useless to speak until he gave me leave. But now”—after all, love-making with that pretty startled face before him, that trembling hand in his, was not unpleasant—“I come to you—for my reward.”