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Owing to the illness of one of his fellow-clerks, it was likely that he would get no holiday until later in the year, which would mean the postponement of their marriage. But this possibility, after all, was not so disagreeable as the probability which forced itself upon him with every tick of the clock that Katharine had completely forgotten her engagement.
Katharine arose, and with a firm step and proud eye she moved along the gallery to the room where their presence was expected by the rest of the family. Cecilia followed in silence, and the whole party immediately took their several places at the board.
Moses ignored the wish. He was not anxious that Katharine should enlarge her acquaintance, which would mean more trouble for all concerned. He merely continued to discourse upon the ancient customs, of how not only did the people bring their dinners to the church, but the mothers their babies, with rocking-chairs furnished galore by the congregation, and ranged in the roomy vestibule.
Suddenly she was conscious of another pause in the proceedings, a half-spoken exclamation from the detective. She looked up. From within the folds of an evening gown he had withdrawn a small, official-looking dispatch box of black tin, tied with red tape, and with great seals hanging from either end. "What is this?" he asked. Katharine stared at it with wide-open eyes.
"Names aren't everything; it's what we feel that's everything. I didn't want silly, kind, interfering letters. I didn't want your father to tell me. I knew it from the first. I prayed that it might be so." "You knew it?" Katharine repeated her mother's words softly and vaguely, looking past her. "How did you know it?" She began, like a child, to finger a tassel hanging from her mother's cloak.
"We thought you would excuse Dicky for not waiting; it's rather hard on a small boy to have such tantalizing parcels right before him and not attack them," apologized Mrs. Morton. Katharine looked somewhat embarrassed to find that she had been the cause of so long a delay but she offered no excuse.
Mary thought that this silence was the silence of relief; his depression she ascribed to the fact that he had seen Katharine and parted from her, leaving her in the company of William Rodney. She could not blame him for loving Katharine, but that, when he loved another, he should ask her to marry him that seemed to her the cruellest treachery.
"I'm sure Dorothy would have telephoned to ask if we had any plans that would interfere." "It's twenty minutes past the hour; you'd better call and see if she's still there," said Mrs. Morton, "and we may as well sit down." Helen was still at the telephone and the family was seated when Katharine came in. "You didn't wait for me," she remarked with apparent surprise.
"There is little giving of titles in Marsden, Katharine, but that does not imply any lack of respect. Moses and Susanna and I were schoolmates together in the little red schoolhouse at the crossroads, and none of us none of us wish to forget it. The same old schoolhouse where your father learned his letters, and where you will go if you are happy enough with me to remain.
And when you shall observe him to be much heated with the subtle drug and your hintings, you shall say to him, "Lo, next this door is the door of the Lady Katharine. Go see if perchance she have not even now this yeoman with her." Viridus nodded his head once up and down; Lascelles clapped his hands twice for joy at this contrivance.
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