She would have to stay in bed for a week or so, that was all, the doctor said.
Tommy’s first floral offering came the next morning, and in the course of the following days he sent almost everything in the florist’s stock, from corsage bouquets to funeral lilies. He came himself, and stayed interminably, until Mr. Grant, ordinarily a mild-mannered and ponderously humored man, observed with unwonted choler that “If that young man comes any earlier, I shall have to give him my place at the breakfast table!” His wife, who looked upon Tommy with that eye of wisdom which mothers with marriageable daughters possess, was more kindly disposed. Tommy, in the parlance of her sphere, was an excellent “catch”. He might see Millicent as often as he liked.
Millicent prolonged her stay in bed. She was aware that she made rather a charming invalid, and throned in her bed she received a gratifying court.
The wise commenters became positive.
“Millicent’s really in love, this time,” they said, “and their engagement will be announced before Tommy goes back to school.”
Tommy, the drawling and indifferent, had given way to Tommy, the intense and devoted. Millicent was aware of her victory.
The hearts with E.P. and O.W. had gone. Tommy’s, hidden by the photograph, reigned alone. Perhaps, she thought idly, after they were married she would have it cut into the glass. It was a pretty fancy. She toyed with the idea, toyed with it as she did with everything in her life; a languid, fickle amusement.
The day before Tommy and Carl were to go back to school Millicent got up. She was paler, and more ethereally beautiful, she decided, with characteristic candor. The sweet peas which he had sent that morning looked rather well on her.
She wondered, as she pinned them on, whether he would propose to-day or wait until the last.
He was nervous; a little haggard, too, she noticed, when he came, and she knew that he would propose to-day. Her triumph was at hand, but suddenly she knew that she wanted more time to think. She must make him wait until to-morrow.