Page:The Prussian officer, and other stories, Lawrence, 1914.djvu/223

 I began to think you’d gone to the fair. I came out to listen to it. I felt almost sure you’d gone. You’re coming in, aren’t you?” She waited a moment anxiously. “We expect you to dinner, you know,” she added wistfully.

The man, who had a short face and spoke with his lip curling up on one side, in a drawling speech with ironically exaggerated intonation, replied after a short hesitation:

“I’m awfully sorry, I am, straight, Lois. It’s a shame. I’ve got to go round to the biz. Man proposes—the devil disposes.” He turned aside with irony in the darkness.

“But surely. Will!” remonstrated the girl, keenly disappointed.

“Fact, Lois!—I feel wild about it myself. But I’ve got to go down to the works. They may be getting a bit warm down there, you know”— he jerked his head in the direction of the fair. “If the Lambs get frisky!—they’re a bit off about the work, and they’d just be in their element if they could set a lighted match to something——”

“Will, you don’t think!” exclaimed the

girl, laying her hand on his arm in the true fashion of romance, and looking up at him earnestly.

“Dad’s not sure,” he replied, looking down at her with gravity. They remained in this attitude for a moment, then he said:

“I might stop a bit. It’s all right for an hour, I should think.”

She looked at him earnestly, then said in tones of deep disappointment and of fortitude: “No, Will, you must go. You’d better go——”