‘There. It will be on a Friday!’
She sat upon a little footstool gazing intently into the fire. It was the afternoon of the day following that of the steward’s successful solicitation of her hand.
‘I wonder if it would be proper in me to run across the park and tell him it is a Friday?’ she said to herself, rising to her feet, looking at her hat lying near, and then out of the window towards the Old House. Proper or not, she felt that she must at all hazards remove the disagreeable, though, as she herself owned, unfounded impression the coincidence had occasioned. She left the house directly, and went to search for him.
Manston was in the timber-yard, looking at the sawyers as they worked. Cytherea came up to him hesitatingly. Till within a distance of a few yards she had hurried forward with alacrity—now that the practical expression of his face became visible she wished almost she had never sought him on such an errand; in his business-mood he was perhaps very stern.
‘It will be on a Friday,’ she said confusedly, and without any preface.
‘Come this way!’ said Manston, in the tone he used for workmen, not being able to alter at an instant’s notice. He gave her his arm and led her back into the avenue, by which time he was lover again. ‘On a Friday, will it, dearest? You do not mind Fridays, surely? That’s nonsense.’
‘Not seriously mind them, exactly—but if it could be any other day?’
‘Well, let us say Old Christmas Eve, then. Shall it be Old Christmas Eve?’
‘Yes, Old Christmas Eve.’
‘Your word is solemn, and irrevocable now?’