Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/233

 "Take her out of the water," shouted the men.

Mrs. Jessop helped Delight to the bank. She herself was soaked to the thighs, but she felt neither chilled nor stiff. Delight was drenched, through and through. Her heavy hair, in long wet strands, half hid her marble face as she sank to the ground, her head resting on her hand—her strong right hand that now felt so weak. . ..

The tailor, now resuscitated, had heard Mrs. Jessop's question and Kirke's answer. Scrambling to his shaking legs, he ran to the Scotchman and grasped him by the arm.

"No, no," he entreated. "Don't take her from me. It was me that saved her. She ought to be mine, I tell you. I want to marry her! She's mine by right."

"Rot!" said Kirke, shaking him off. "Do you suppose she wants to tie up with a skinny old gaffer like you?"

But what was this? Bastien at the water's rim. He curved his hand at his mouth and shouted:

"Mrs. Jessop! Ask her if she'll have me? I'll take her fast enough."

"Oh, is that you, Billy, my beauty? Yes, I'll ask her if she'll have you. . . . She says she doesn't care. She loves you all so well, she'll marry any, or all of you. Settle it among yourselves, gentlemen."

Burly Fergussen pushed his way to the front.

"Marryin' hasn't been my long suit," he said. "I'm all for travellin' light. But, blast my eyes, if I aren't ready to marry this poor girl."

"You," said a sneering voice beside him. "Do you thing she'd marry a coarse brute like you? Smelling of fish and dirty with tobacco juice? Have a heart."

It was the slender, dark-haired schoolmaster who spoke. He had been in the park before it all began, so absorbed in his own dreams that he had heard nothing of what