“I don’t mind your kissing me, Dan. I like it. Now we’re engaged you ought to be awfully spoony, you know, and squeeze me, and tell me how lovely I look, and all that.”
They were on the front seat of the ’bus; the people behind did not count as spectators; the hurrying roadway and crowded pavement below were remote as the clear-shining stars above. Daniel surrendered to the coaxing murmur, and kissed her a long lover’s kiss. When an inspector, a short time afterwards, demanded their tickets, Goddard forgot his Collectivist principles and became a fierce Individualist.
“What a confounded nuisance—these fellows disturbing us! It oughtn’t to be allowed,” he said, resettling himself. And Lizzie acquiesced.
Towards the end of the journey they grew silent. Lizzie, tired, dozed with her head on his shoulder. A sudden jolt of the ‘bus awakened her. She laughed, and rubbed her eyes.
“I do believe I’ve been asleep. What have you been doing all the time?”
“Thinking,” he replied, smiling at the question.
“What of?”
“Well, I was thinking of my speech on Saturday in Hyde Park, you know. There is an Eight Hour demonstration, and the League people have asked me to take a platform. I’m becoming quite an important person, you see, Liz.”
“I thought you were going to say you’d been thinking of me,” said Lizzie, piqued. “I call that beastly of you.”
It took him all the time until they parted to re-establish the “spoony” relations that alone, according to Lizzie, seemed to make for happiness between them.