Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/364

 "No, we oughtn't to have," Calvin denied, accepting with slight emphasis the intimacy of her "we." "I prefer this. Don't you?"

"I like it," admitted Joan Daisy, happily, and looking up at him, she remembered his mother in the garden and the home of his which went back through Antietam and the Revolution for two hundred and fifty years.

"Your mother knows?" she asked him, suddenly.

"What?" he said, startling; and when she did not answer, he repeated, "My mother knows what?"

"How you were hurt," she said; and that was what she intended to say; but it was not all that was in her head. Did his mother know that he was here with Joan Daisy Royle? Of course his mother could not know it, Joan realized; what she meant by this to herself, was, did he know what he was doing, he of the mother in the garden, he of the old home at Clarke's Ferry? So she had made that mention of his mother to remind him of himself before he went further with Joan Daisy Royle.

She must have thus reminded him, she felt sure, but she saw no sign of alteration toward her as he answered, "I telegraphed her that the newspapers exaggerated my injury. I have not written her yet."

Joan looked down from him. Yes; he knew what he was doing; and she knew. He wanted her; and with him to want a girl was to want to marry her; also with him marriage must be a very different affair from what it was to Ket or to Hoberg or to any other man she knew.

She did not look up at him again, but sat very still until they arrived at the station for Mr. Hoberg's office.

She had no wish whatever to go to the office; she could not imagine herself returning even if Mr. Clarke left her; but she arose and he went from the car with her and down to the walk and to the very door of the building before they discussed the matter.