"May I?" asked Kate, dully.
"Indeed, you may!" said Agatha. "The male of the species, when he
is a man of Robert's attainments and calibre, can be swerved from
pursuit of the female he covets, by nothing save extinction."
"You mean," said Kate with an effort, "that if Robert asked a
woman to marry him, it would mean that he loved her."
"Indubitably!" cried Agatha.
Kate laughed until she felt a little better, but she went home in
a mood far different from that in which she started. Then she had
been very happy, and she had intended to tell Agatha about her
happiness, the very first of all. Now she was far from happy.
Possibly -- a thousand things, the most possible, that Robert had
responded to Agatha's suggestion, and stopped and asked her that
abrupt question, from an impulse as sudden and inexplicable as had
possessed her when she married George Holt. Kate fervently wished
she had gone to the cornfield as usual that afternoon.
"That's the way it goes," she said angrily, as she threw off her
better dress and put on her every-day gingham to prepare supper.
"That's the way it goes! Stay in your element, and go on with
your work, and you're all right. Leave your job and go trapesing
over the country, wasting your time, and you get a heartache to
pay you. I might as well give up the idea that I'm ever to be
happy, like anybody else. Every time I think happiness is coming
my way, along comes something that knocks it higher than
Gilderoy's kite. Hang the luck!"
She saw Robert pass while she was washing the dishes, and knew he
was going to Agatha's, and would stop when he came back. She
finished her work, put Little Poll to bed, and made herself as
attractive as she knew how in her prettiest blue dress. All the
time she debated whether she would say anything to him about what
Agatha had said or not. She decided she would wait awhile, and
watch how he acted. She thought she could soon tell. So when
Robert came, she was as nearly herself as possible, but when he
began to talk about being married soon, the most she would say was
that she would begin to think about it at Christmas, and tell him
by spring. Robert was bitterly disappointed. He was very lonely;
he needed better housekeeping than his aged mother was capable of,
to keep him up to a high mark in his work. Neither of them was
young any longer; he could see no reason why they should not be
married at once. Of the reason in Kate's mind, he had not a
glimmering. But Kate had her way. She would not even talk of a
time, or express an opinion as to whether she would remain on the
farm, or live in Nancy Ellen's house, or sell it and build
whatever she wanted for herself. Robert went away baffled, and
disappointed over some intangible thing he could not understand.