Abruptly, silently, he took his leave of Mrs. Allen. He feared that if he said more she might construe it as a request, that she should immediately lay his proposal before Mabel. With a despairing, haunted look he sought the board walk.
Carpenters were hammering and sawing, painters were busy in the booths, a few old ladies sat about in the sun, here and there a happy youngster dug in the sand with a tin shovel. Decatur envied them all. They were sane, rational persons, who were not likely to be interviewed and trapped into saying fool things. Their acts were not liable to be misconstrued.
Seeing a pier jutting out, he heedlessly followed it to the very end. And there, on one of the seats built for summer guests, he found Jane.
“She is having her hair done and her nails polished, I believe,” said Decatur, gloomily, dropping down beside Jane. “She is being prepared, as nearly as I can gather, to receive a proposal of marriage.”
“Ah! Then you--” She turned to him inquiringly.
“It appears so now,” he admitted. “I have been talking to her mother.”
“Oh, I see.” She said it quietly, gently, in a tone of submission.
“But you don't see,” he protested. “No one sees; that is, no one sees things as they really are. Do you think, Jane, that you could listen to me for a few moments without jumping at conclusions, without assuming that you know exactly what I am going to say before I have said it?”
“Then I would like to make a confession to you.”
“Wouldn't it be better to--to make it first to Mabel?”
“No, it would not,” he declared, doggedly. “It concerns that interview in which I was quoted as saying things about gray-eyed girls.”
“I guessed that much. Well, I said those things, just as I was quoted as saying them, but I did not mean all that I was credited with meaning. I want you to believe, Jane, that when I admitted my preference for gray eyes and--and all that, I was thinking of one gray-eyed girl in particular. Can you believe that?”
“Oh, I did from the very first; that is, I did as soon as Aunt Judith--”
“Never mind about Aunt Judith,” interrupted Decatur, firmly. “We will get to her in time. We are talking now about that interview. You must admit, Jane, that there are many gray-eyed girls in the country; I don't know just how many, thank Heaven, but there are a lot of them. And most of them seem not only to have read that interview, but to have made a personal application of my remarks. Have you any idea what that means to me?”