Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/182

908 before an ancient mansion. Kitty had alighted and been engulfed by the interior darkness before I could reach her, and though I knew that her great-aunt lived within, I remained gazing at the hansom cab.

Then an idea entered my mind, an idea for which the mad May season was alone accountable. When Miss Morris re-entered the hansom cab it was I who received the order to drive home; it was I who cracked the long whip and drove recklessly; it was I who feasted my sight on the top of a broad-brimmed hat, a loop of dark hair, and the tip of a small and haughty nose. I had the trapdoor in the top of the cab open all the way.

Trusting in the disguise of the former cabby's hat, which I had hired, I made straight for the Park, and when we were rolling smoothly between green lawns, with no one of any account in sight, I bent low and whispered:

"Kitty, dear, will you marry me?"

She started violently and upturned a white face. I don't know what she thought seeing my face above her there, but her eyes filled slowly with tears, and she whispered, "Dick!"

"Kitty," I said, "don't cry, or I shall come down from the roof, and here is Mrs. Van Dam's brougham. I would not have frightened you for anything in the world." I slowed the horse to a walk, so that I could give my whole attention to the trap-door.

"I have come to claim your promise," I called down to her. "Tell me, dearest, that you are glad to see me."

Her pride seemed to be melting before my eyes. Her tears overflowed, and she held her hands up before her face, but I caught a quavering voice, "I am glad, Dick—so, so glad!"

I dropped the reins and pressed closer to the little door. "Darling Kitty, if you cry you'll break my heart," I called. "Be a brave girl. Oh, Kitty, couldn't you stretch your hand up and let me touch it once?"

"I—I can't reach," she sobbed.

"Then you do love me?" I asked.

She wiped her eyes. "Dick," she said, "couldn't you come down?"

I believe the horse was arrested that afternoon for walking on the grass and eating young trees, but it pleases me to think that while Kitty and I wandered through the sweet paths and blossoming alleys, the poor beast was tasting green food and resting his tired bones.

There in the early solitude, in the genial sunshine and the unsteady shadows, Kitty confessed to me that she had gone to Boston for fear of weakening in her resolution to avoid me.

"Oh, Dick," she said, "I thought you would never come and take me in spite of myself."

"Kitty," said I, "would you have wrecked our whole lives from pride and self-will? Would you have let me lose you?"

She turned away her head and blushed. "Dick," she faltered, "this afternoon you will receive an invitation to dine with my aunt, and I—I am to be there, Dick."