Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/128

116 "And now, what are you going to do?" he asked, and his voice was full of tender raillery for her lost tryst with the girl friend, and for her pretty helplessness.

"I—I don't know," she said.

"But I do!" he looked in her eyes. "You are going to be kind. Life is so cruel. You are going to help me to cheat Life and Destiny. You are going to leave your friend to the waste desolation of this place, if she comes by the next train: but she won't—she's kept at home by toothache, or a broken heart, or some little foolish ailment like that,"—he prided himself on the light touch here,—"and you are going to be adorably kind and sweet and generous, and to let me drink the pure wine of life for this one day."

Her eyes drooped. Fully inspired, he struck a master-chord in the lighter key.

"You have a basket. I have a brown paper parcel. Let me carry both, and we will share both. We'll go to Chevening Park. It will be fun. Will you?"

There was a pause: he wondered whether by any least likely chance the chord had not rung true. Then—