Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/217

 cattle breeder and can give you the best of everything, fine house and clothes and everything. i think it a shame for a girl with your grand looks to be working in a hotel. i make you this formal offer of marriage hereby. Now Miss Mainprize this is what i want you to do. i want you to meet me on the other side of the lagoon tonight at sundown. Cross the Park to where the lagoon is narrowest, and you will find a green rowboat tied among the willows. Get in and row yourself to the far side. i will be there. You better bring your basket of dishes with you as i will have my motor car waiting and if we come to a proper understanding there won't be no need for you to go back to Beemer's at all. We can be married at once by special licence. Now my dear Miss Mainprize don't fail me for my heart is set on making a lady of you as you deserve. Meet me at Sundown sure don't be afraid.

Red and white. Hot and cold. Still and trembling. Delight was shaken by a flood of emotion. A proposal on beautiful gilt-edged paper pushed under her door! A terrifying, delicious, arrogant proposal. A gentleman farmer! A breeder of prize cattle! There had been several to dinner, she knew. If she had only known which was he, so she might know what he looked like! Just when she had been worrying about whether she should meet Bill. Now this stupendous thing, blotting out all else. A lady! She looked about the stuffy room, a mere closet, lighted by a skylight. She looked at her red hands, her feet in down-at-heel slippers, wet from the wet floor. She looked at her tin trunk, at Jimmy's trunk—Jimmy's trunk. Oh, if Jimmy hadn't run away from Brancepeth! She would never see Jimmy again. Except perhaps, as she rolled along in her motor car—and he trudging in