Page:Dale - A Marriage Below Zero.djvu/94

88 fifty years from now, Arthur—you a nice reminiscent old man with white hair (you see I decline to think of you as cross and crotchety), sitting on one side of the fire, and I, a talkative old body, having outlived every weakness but that furnished by the tongue, which no woman could outlive if she were a female Methuselah."

Arthur laughed, and seemed for the first time since I had known him to be perfectly at his ease. I put my hand ("my little gloved hand," as my friends the novelists would say) on his arm. He might have squeezed it if he had chosen. I am quite sure I should not have objected, except perhaps by a little maidenly coyness, which does not amount to very much. Arthur, however, took no notice whatever of my innocent little band. Indeed, by a movement he made as if to look out of the carriage window, he contrived to shake it off. This I did not notice at the time, but as I have since become accustomed to think and brood over every little incident of those days, I have remembered it.

After that we talked merrily for the remainder of the ride. I was determined that