"I'm on fire with impatience, Bee," he told her. "I can hardly wait for that three weeks to pass. The days drag when I'm not with you."
He was standing a step or two below her, a graceful, well-groomed figure of ease, an altogether desirable catch in the matrimonial market. His dark hair, parted in the middle, was beginning to thin, and tiny crow's-feet radiated from the eyes, but he retained the light, slim figure of youth. It ought not to be hard to love Clarendon Bromfield, his fiancée reflected. Yet he disappointingly failed to stir her pulses.
She smiled with friendly derision. "Poor Clary! You don't look like a
Vesuvius ready to erupt. You have such remarkable self-control."
His smile met hers. "I can't go up and down the street ringing a bell like a town crier and shouting it out to everybody I meet."
Round the corner of the house a voice was lifted in tuneless song.
"Oh, I'm goin' home
Bull-whackin' for to spurn;
I ain't got a nickel,
And I don't give a dern.
'T is when I meet a pretty girl,
You bet I will or try,
I'll make her my little wife,
Root hog or die."
"You see Johnnie isn't ashamed to shout out his good intentions," she said.
"Johnnie isn't engaged to the loveliest creature under heaven. He doesn't have to lie awake nights for fear the skies will fall and blot him out before his day of bliss."
Beatrice dropped a little curtsy. She held out her hand in dismissal.
"Till to-morrow, Clary."
As Bromfield turned away, Johnnie came round a corner of the house dragging a garden hose. He was attacking another stanza of the song: