"Certainly."
"Oh, Mabyn," said Wenna far more seriously, "it is not of dresses I am thinking at all; but I shudder to think of getting married just now. I could not do it. I have not had enough time to forget what is past; and until that is done how could I marry any man?"
"Wenna, I do love you when you talk like that," her sister cried. "You can be so wise and reasonable when you choose. Of course you are quite right, dear. But you don't mean to say he wants you to get married before he goes to Jamaica, and then to leave you alone?"
"Oh no. He wants me to go with him to Jamaica."
Mabyn uttered a short cry of alarm: "To Jamaica! To take you away from the whole of us! Why—Oh, Wenna, I do hate being a girl so, for you're not allowed to swear! If I were a man now! To Jamaica! Why don't you know that there are hundreds of people always being killed there by the most frightful hurricanes and earthquakes and large serpents in the woods? To Jamaica! No, you are not going to Jamaica just yet. I don't think you are going to Jamaica just yet."
"No, indeed, I am not," said Wenna with a quiet decision. "Nor could I think of getting married in any case at present. But then—don't you see, Mabyn?—Mr. Roscorla is just a little peculiar in some ways—"
"Yes, certainly."
"—and he likes to have a definite reason for what you do. If I were to tell him of the repugnance I have to the notion of getting married just now, he would call it mere sentiment, and try to argue me out of it: then we should have a quarrel. But if, as you say, a girl may fairly refuse in point of time—"
"Now, I'll tell you," said Mabyn plainly: "no girl can get married properly who hasn't six months to get ready in. She might manage in three or four months for a man she was particularly fond of; but if it is a mere stranger, and a disagreeable person, and one who ought not to marry her at all, then six months is the very shortest time. Just you send Mr. Roscorla to me and I'll tell him all about it."
Wenna laughed: "Yes, I've no doubt you would. I think, he's more afraid of you than of all the serpents and snakes in Jamaica."