After the dance, Dick made good his threat with Gail, and formally proposed, urging his enterprise in coming after her as one of his claims to consideration; but Gail, laughing, and liking him tremendously, told him he was too handsome to be married, and sent him back home with a fresh gardenia in his buttonhole. That night Arly and Gail sat long and silently on the comfortable couch in front of Arly’s fireplace, one in fluffy blue and the other in fluffy pink, and the one in fluffy blue furtively studying the one in fluffy pink from under her black eyelashes. The one in pink was gazing into the fire with far-seeing brown eyes, and was braiding and unbraiding, with slender white fingers, a flowing strand of her brown hair.
“Aren’t you a little bit homesick? I am.”
“So am I!” answered Gail, with sudden animation.
The Reverend Smith Boyd came down to breakfast with a more or less hollow look in his face, and his mother, inspecting him keenly, poured his coffee immediately. There was the trace of a twinkle in her eyes, which were nevertheless extremely solicitous.
The Reverend Smith Boyd dutifully withdrew his mind from elsewhere, to consider that proposition justly.
“I think not,” he decided, and he fell into exactly such a state of melancholy, trifling with his grape fruit, as Mrs. Boyd wished to test. She focussed her keen eyes on him microscopically.
“Miss Sargent is coming back to-night; on the six-ten train.”
There was a clatter in the Reverend Smith Boyd’s service plate. He had been awkward with his spoon, and dropped it. He made to pick it up, but reached two inches the other side of the handle. Mrs. Boyd could have laughed aloud for sheer joy. She made up her mind to do some energetic missionary work with Gail Sargent at the first opportunity. The foolish notions Gail had about the church should be removed. Mrs. Boyd had long ago studied this matter of religion, with a clear mind and an honest heart. It was a matter of faith, and she had it; so why be miserable! Her reverie was broken by the calm and mellow voice of her son.
“That is delightful news,” he returned with a frank enthusiasm which was depressing to his mother.
“I think I shall have the Sargents over to dinner,” she went on, persisting in her hope.