"
"And you don't call yourself a girl any longer!" I laughed.
"It's always 'girls' and 'men,'" she said. "If Cecil Harshaw is not a man
now, he never will be."
I didn't know, I said, what the point at issue was between us. _I_ thought
Cecil Harshaw was very much a man, as men go, and I saw nothing, frankly,
so very far amiss with his behavior.
"It's very kind of you, Mrs. Daly, to defend him, I am sure. I suppose he
could do no less than propose to me, after he had brought me out to marry a
man who didn't appear to be quite ready; and if it had to be done, it was
best to do it quickly."
So _that_ was what she had been threshing out between whiles? I might have
tried to answer her, but now the little tent among the willows began to
glow with fire and candlelight, and a dark shape loomed against it. It was
Cecil Harshaw, bareheaded, with an umbrella, coming to escort us in to
supper.
I never saw such a pair of roses as Kitty wore in her cheeks that night,
nor the girl herself in such a gale. Tom gave me a triumphant glance across
the table, as if to say, See how the medicine works! It was either the
beginning of the cure, or else it was a feverish reaction.
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