“Well, there will be the house to look after,” he said, in an altered tone; “and then—well—there will be babies—and lots of things,” he concluded lamely.
“Oh, I don’t like babies,” said Lizzie, with frank inconsequence. “They always want such a lot of fussing after, and they’re always squalling. I’m sure I shall want to smack them. Nasty little things.”
He looked at her rather perplexedly. It was a delicate subject. She caught his glance and coloured.
“You shouldn’t go saying such things,” she murmured, giggling in embarrassment—“and we not married yet!”
Then something seemed to catch him by the heart, a queer chilly grip, and tug it downwards. He blamed himself for having suggested the idea, although he had done so without shadowing thoughts. The innuendo jarred upon him—he could not tell why.
“I am sorry,” he said gravely.
There was a silence for some time. Goddard idly turned over the leaves of a rickety album filled with faded photographs of stiff, staring people in the costume of the sixties.
Lizzie lay back in her chair, and devised the white satin wedding-dress. At last she called to him softly.
“Dan.”
He turned, saw her reclining there, smiling at him. Her cheeks were so pink, her fair hair so bewilderingly soft and fluffy, her parted lips so fresh and inviting, her young figure so cleanly cut, in spite of the ill-fitting dress and cheap corsets beneath, her white throat set off by the coquettish blue ribbon so alluring, that the heart of the young man, who knew little of the ways and fascinations of women, threw off the cold grip in a great quick throb.