A waiter after
several trips about the table, and many helpless glances at Caroline,
who was maintaining a cheerful, futile questionnaire as to the
succulence of this dish or that, managed to obtain the semblance of an
order and hurried away....
Olive was speaking to Merlin--
"When, then?" she asked, her voice faintly shaded with disappointment.
He realized that he had just answered no to some question she had
asked him.
"Oh, sometime."
"Don't you--care?"
A rather pathetic poignancy in her question brought his eyes back to
her.
"As soon as possible, dear," he replied with surprising tenderness.
"In two months--in June."
"So soon?" Her delightful excitement quite took her breath away.
"Oh, yes, I think we'd better say June. No use waiting."
Olive began to pretend that two months was really too short a time for
her to make preparations. Wasn't he a bad boy! Wasn't he impatient,
though! Well, she'd show him he mustn't be too quick with _her_.
Indeed he was so sudden she didn't exactly know whether she ought to
marry him at all.
"June," he repeated sternly.
Olive sighed and smiled and drank her coffee, her little finger lifted
high above the others in true refined fashion. A stray thought came to
Merlin that he would like to buy five rings and throw at it.
"By gosh!" he exclaimed aloud. Soon he _would_ be putting rings
on one of her fingers.
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