Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/392

578 young lady was curled up like a kitten, sound asleep, in a nest of pillows upon the broad window seat in Miss Porter's study.

"Well?" she said sleepily, opening her eyes and smiling at Miss Porter, who exclaimed in an indignant voice:

"Edith, you amaze me; you ought to be walking the floor!"

"I did until I got tired; you have been gone such a long, long time."

"He had opened your note," said Miss Porter, sinking into her arm-chair and drawing off her gloves, "before I could speak to him, so I told him nothing. I let him think I was an erratic fool of a woman who took the trouble to wish him bon voyage in a romantic, unconventional way. When you write your refusal, do explain briefly about me."

"He had read my note, had he?" said Edith, who was then very wide awake. "How did he seem about it?"

"Very happy," replied Miss Porter; "quite mad with delight. Poor fellow, I never liked him so much as I do to-night, Edith."

"And he was very happy, was he?" said Edith, thoughtfully. "Well, he does think a great deal of me, after all. Do you know—coming home I—I thought I had been a little too hasty in deciding to get the note back."

Edith had here the grace to blush.

"I wish you had been hasty enough to notify me of your change of mind," observed Miss Porter.

"Ah, but I couldn't do that, you know," said Edith. She had piled all the fluffy pillows in her lap, and, resting her round chin on the top of one, she smiled at Miss Porter over the barricade.

"Because, don't you see, it was just the—the thought of your going over there, and undoing my acceptance of him, and making him appear in the light of one lost to me forever, that made me realize how—how much I cared for him after all. It was that thought, and the thought, too, that it wouldn't be long before Paul would be attracted by some other girl; he's a dear fellow, Paul, but fickle, I am afraid. Yes, it was the thought of this other girl's inevitable appearance that made me decide that, even if you did wrest the letter from him, I should send it right back to him the first thing in the morning. Now, you can understand exactly what it was that changed me. It's quite in your line; there's no intuition about it, it's all perfectly logical."

"It's all perfectly dog-in-the-mangerical," replied Miss Porter. "Paul Verdenal deserves to be accepted for some better reason, too."

The pile of pillows was scattered into the four corners of the study. Edith sprang to her feet.

"You dear thing," said she, "you're cross. You don't know it, but you are; and I am going to make you a Welsh rabbit. We'll have a nice little bachelor supper to celebrate my engagement."