"Things might be worse, then," grumbled Mr. Copley. "Anyhow, you have tied my tongue, my fine fellow. I can't say a word against you. But look here;—if you don't want a wife that will rule you, I advise you not to marry my Dolly. She's a witch for having her own way. 'My Dolly'!" Mr. Copley half groaned. "I suppose now she's your Dolly. I don't want to give her to any man, that's the truth."
"And I thought all this nursing had been so disinterested!" said Mrs. Copley dolefully.
Sandie's answer to this was conclusive, of the subject and the conversation both. He went up to Mrs. Copley, took her hand, and bent down and kissed her. Just at that moment they were called to supper; and Mrs. Copley, completely conquered, went down with all her reproaches smothered in the bud. Yet I confess her face showed a conflict of feelings as she entered the kitchen. It was cloudy with disappointment, and at the same time her eyes were wet with tears of some sweeter feeling. Dolly, standing behind the supper-table, looked from the one to the other as the two came in.
"It is all settled, Dolly," said Mr. Shubrick.
And I think he would have taken his betrothal kiss, then and there, had not Dolly's glance been so shy and shrinking that she flashed at him. She was standing quietly and upright; there was no awkwardness in her demeanour; it was the look of her eyes that laid bans upon Sandie. He restrained himself; paid her no particular attention during supper; talked a great deal, but on entirely indifferent subjects; and if he played the lover to anybody, certainly it was to Mrs. Copley.
"He is a good young man, I believe," said Mrs. Copley, making so much of an admission as she and Dolly went upstairs.
"O mother," said Dolly, half laughing and half vexed, "you say that just because he has been entertaining you!"
"Well," returned Mrs. Copley. "I like to be entertained. Don't you find him entertaining?"
Mr. Shubrick kept up the same tactics for several days; behaving himself in the house very much as he had done ever since he had come to it. And out of the house, though he and Dolly took long walks and held long talks together; he was very cool and undemonstrative. He would let her get accustomed to him. And certainly in these conversations he was entertaining. Walking, or sitting on the bank under some old beech or oak tree, he had endless things to tell Dolly; things to which she listened as eagerly as ever Desdemona did to Othello; stories out of which, avoid personalities as he would, she could not but gain, step by step, new knowledge of the story-teller. And hour by hour Dolly's respect for him and appreciation of him grew. Little by little she found how thorough his education was, and how fine his accomplishments. Especially as a draughtsman. Easily and often, in telling her of some place or of some naval engagement, Sandie would illustrate for her with any drawing materials that came to hand; making spirited and masterly sketches with a few strokes of his hand, it might be on paper, or on a bit of bark, or on the ground even.
"Ah," said Dolly one day, watching him, "I cannot do that! I can do something, but I cannot do that."