Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/183

 'cause I ran away from the hotel. I didn't know where to go and he brought me here."

Perkin giggled. "Say, you are a little goose. Do you s'pose you've been any use here, to speak of? I mean the thimbleberries. Why it'd have taken ten like you to have picked enough to be worth while. It made me laugh to hitch up the waggon to take them to the station. We'd decided to let the crop go. The price wasn't worth pickin' them for anyway. We just put you at 'em to give you something to do, see?"

She was utterly bewildered. "But what did you want me for, then?"

"For this." He kissed her again. Then—"to marry me. To be my wife. Mrs. Perkin Heaslip. Fergussen knowed. Pa told him to fetch us a likely girl from town, so's I could marry her and make things sure. And make Joel sicker than ever . . . and he fetched you. . . . And Pa's got texts picked out to paint on the barn to celebrate the marriage and when you get a baby, and all. . . ."

He kissed her again in ecstasy, rocked her in his arms. . . . A shadow fell, a chill rose from the stream. Something crept out of the water on to the brink, and, with a squeak of anger and fear, leaped back again, making a tiny splash.

Delight shivered. Perkin's wife. . . forever shut in that secret farm. . . all that hate. . . those terrible texts on the wall. . . Perkin's arms, about her, his blazing grey eyes. . ..

Suddenly Jimmy's eyes were looking into hers, pleading, blue as a little child's; and his mouth, tender, a little sulky, but a dear mouth, after all. Oh, she loved Jimmy; she would not give in to Perkin. Stronger than she? Ah, but not more knowing. Her fingers twined them-