This made her laugh, and she dropped the first dish with a crash. “Poor mother!” she exclaimed. “I know she heard that, and she'll be in agony to know which one it is.”
Mrs. Gaylord did indeed hear it, far off in her chamber, and quaked with an anxiety which became intolerable at last.
“Marcia! Marcia!” she quavered, down the stairs, “what have you broken?”
Marcia opened the door long enough to call back, “Oh, only the old blue-edged platter, mother!” and then she flew at Bartley, crying, “For shame! For shame!” and pressing her hand over his mouth to stifle his laughter. “She'll hear you, Bartley, and think you're laughing at her.” But she laughed herself at his struggles, and ended by taking him by the hand and pulling him out into, the kitchen, where neither of them could be heard. She abandoned herself to the ecstasy of her soul, and he thought she had never been so charming as in this wild gayety.
“Why, Marsh! I never saw you carry on so before!”
“You never saw me engaged before! That's the way all girls act—if they get the chance. Don't you like me to be so?” she asked, with quick anxiety.
“Rather!” he replied.
“Oh, Bartley!” she exclaimed, “I feel like a child. I surprise myself as much as I do you; for I thought I had got very old, and I didn't suppose I should ever let myself go in this way. But there is something about this that lets me be as silly as I like. It's somehow as if I were a great deal more alone when I'm with you than when I'm by myself! How does it make you feel?”
“Good!” he answered, and that satisfied her better than if he had entered into those subtleties which she had tried to express: it was more like a man. He had his arm about her again, and she put down her hand on his to press it closer against her heart.
“Of course,” she explained, recurring to his surprise at her frolic mood, “I don't expect you to be silly because I am.”