Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/54

 "Where's the use?"

"Oh, well, we'll be able to meet and talk things over. Folk won't be suspicious if they think we're cousins."

Delight was scornful. "You promised him to keep quiet, eh? After what he's done to you!"

May threw herself back on her pillow, her face swollen from crying, her eyes bloodshot. "You just wait, my beauty, till you're in a fix like this with a man some d'y. You don't know what you'd do. You don't know anythink."

Delight hung over the foot of the bed looking down at her. "I know I'd never, never promise—"

"Oh, shut up! I'd ha' promised 'im anything down in that dark cubby 'ole."

"Well, o' course, if you're going to let him get around you."

"You'd have done the sime, Delight. 'E reely is charmin'. 'E just 'ung on to me and cried like a little child. 'E says 'e's that debilertated wiv the climate and all that 'e's scared of 'is own shadder, pore lad."

Between pity for him and pity for her own plight May's tears fell like rain on the pillow. Delight helped her to undress and put her into bed, then thoughtfully set away her Granny's tea-set. The house was quiet, save for Charley's sonorous snore in the next room, and the occasional stamp of a horse in the stable. She sat with her chin on her hand, staring at her reflection in the spotted looking-glass. She smiled sleepily at herself, glad that she was still her very own, that no man had the power to make her promise unnatural things in a stuffy little cubby hole, and then cry herself to sleep.