who have taken my place in the business; and as long as I have met you I will just walk along with you, and come Thursday. I suppose the baby won’t be likely to wake up just yet, and when he does you’ll have to get his supper and put him to bed. Is that the way the rule goes?”
Eudora nodded in a shamed, speechless sort of way.
“All right. I’ll come Thursday—but say, look here, Eudora. This is a quiet road, not a soul in sight, just like an outdoor room to ourselves. Why shouldn’t I know now just as well as wait? Say, Eudora, you know how I used to feel about you. Well, it has lasted all these years. There has never been another woman I even cared to look at. You are alone, except for that baby, and I am alone. Eudora—”
The man hesitated. His flushed face had paled. Eudora paced silently and waveringly at his side.
“Eudora,” the man went on, “you know you always used to run away from me—never gave me a chance to really ask; and I thought you didn’t care. But somehow I have wondered—perhaps because you never got married—if you didn’t quite mean it, if you didn’t quite know your own mind. You’ll think I’m a conceited ass, but I’m not a bad sort, Eudora. I would be as good to you as I know how, and—we could bring him up together.” He pointed to the carriage. “I have plenty of money. We could do anything we wanted to do for him, and we should not have to live alone. Say, Eudora, you may not think it’s the thing for a man to own up to, but, hang it all! I’m alone, and I don’t want to face the rest of my life alone. Eudora, do you think you could make up your mind to marry me, after all?”
They had reached the turn in the road. Just beyond rose the stately pile of the old Yates mansion. Eudora stood still and gave one desperate look at her lover. “I will let you know Thursday,” she gasped. Then she was gone, trundling the baby-carriage with incredible speed.
“But, Eudora—”
“I must go,” she called back, faintly. The man stood staring after the hurrying figure with its swishing black skirts and its flying points of rich India shawl, and he smiled happily and tenderly. That evening at the inn his caller, a young fellow just married and beaming with happiness, saw an answering beam in the
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