‘I can’t stay—I must run in now.’ She tried to take the basket from him.
‘Don’t go yet. I made up my mind to tell you when I was standing over there looking at you. I was meaning to do it many a time afore, but just when I was ready, you always got out of my way, and I couldn’t say it when you came back.’
‘I wish you’d let me go. I don’t want to hear anything—I’m in a hurry. Won’t father do?’
She was nervous; there were signs even of distress in her manner, and she could not look at him.
‘Ay, your father will do,’ he answered earnestly, ‘if you say that I may tell him we have agreed about it.’
‘About what?—No, no, no; you must not tell him that. We are not agreed. We never will agree about that.’
She was frightened, dropped the basket, and would have run away, but he had caught her hand. He was pale, and although his heart was hammering at his chest, he was outwardly calm.
‘Don’t say never, Pansy,’ he pleaded in a low voice; and she was touched by the gentleness of it, which contrasted so strangely with the manner of the loud-voiced orator when speaking to a crowd on the village green. ‘I’ve scared you by coming too sudden upon you. But you’ll think about it, and you’ll give me the right word some other time.’
‘There is no need to think about it—I cannot think about it,’ she answered with tears of mingled vexation and regret in her eyes.
‘But you’ll come to think about it after a bit, and I’ll wait—I’ll wait until you come to it.’