"I found that passage from Paul and read the whole chapter," Whaley began, but Cavanaugh stopped him.
"I'll see it to-morrow," he said. "My eyes are not strong enough to read at night, even with my specs, and I'm a little bit tired, too. I walked out to the sawmill—five miles and back—this morning, to see about some timber, and it was quite a stretch for me. Good night."
"No wonder he didn't want to see it," Whaley smiled to himself as he leaned in the doorway. "I had him beat and he knows it. I'll bet the old skunk has already looked it up, or asked somebody about it."
CHAPTER XII
A wide country road stretched out in the moonlight before John and Tilly. They walked slowly. Tilly still held his arm and he was transported with sheer ecstasy by that close contact with her. Once or twice he started to speak, but found himself unable to think of anything appropriate, and this both angered and alarmed him, for, he asked himself, how was it that Eperson was always so ready with his tongue when in Tilly's presence? But Tilly seemed to understand John's way and not to care much whether he talked or was silent. As he dared to glance down on her pretty head just below his left shoulder he remembered the bride and the bridegroom on the train, and the contractor's words came back to him like breeze music from the waving tops of celestial trees: "It is ahead of you, my boy."
Ahead of him? Marriage? A home for Tilly and himself alone? She, his wife?—actually his wife? Absurd! Impossible! The bare thought, checked though it was, set fire to his brain and he was thrilled in all his nerves and members. He caught her upward glance and she smiled almost as if she had glimpsed his vision and was thus responding to it.
"You don't like Joel," she said, knowing full well that that remark would prod his tardy speech.
"Well, what if I don't?" he answered, with querulous sharpness.
"Well, you shouldn't dislike him," the little minx continued, designedly. "He hasn't done you any harm. How could he? You have known each other such a short time."