"I have seen--what?" asked Ida, trying to rouse herself and to pay
attention to what he was saying.
"I say I suppose you've seen how it is with me, Ida, and why I am an
haltered being? It is you who have done it; it's because I'm right down
in love with you. There, I've said it now! I've been going to say it
for days past; but, somehow, though I dessay you don't mean it, you
seem so cold and standoffish, and quite different to other girls when a
man pays them attention. But I dessay you understand now, and you'll
treat me differently. I'm awfully in love with you, Ida, and I don't
see why we shouldn't be engaged. I'm getting on at the office, and if I
can squeeze some money out of the guv'nor, I shall set up for myself.
Of course, there'll be a pretty how-d'y-do over this at home, for
they're always wanting me to marry money, and unfortunately you've lost
yours. Not that I mind that, mind you. I believe in following the
dictates of your 'eart, and I know what my 'eart says. And now what do
_you_ say, Ida?"
And he pressed her arm and looked into her face with a confident smile.
Ida drew her disengaged hand across her brow and frowned, as if she
were trying to grasp his meaning.
"I--I beg your pardon, Joseph," she said. "I didn't quite understand--I
was thinking of something else. You were asking me--"
He reddened and pushed his thick lips out with an expression of
resentment.
"Well, I like that!" he said, uneasily, but with an attempt at a laugh.
"I've just been proposing to you--asking you to be my wife; and you're
going to, aren't you?"
Ida drew her arm from his, and regarded him with stony amazement. For
the moment she really thought that either he had been drinking too much
spirits at the refreshment-room at the station and that it was an
elaborate joke on his part, or that she had lost her senses and was
imagining a hideously ridiculous speech, too absurd and grotesque for
even Joseph to have uttered. Then she saw by his face that he was sober
and that he had actually proposed to her, and, in a kind of
desperation, she laughed.
He had been going to take her arm again, but his hand fell to his side,
and he looked at her with a mixture of astonishment and indignation,
with such an expression of wounded vanity and resentment, that Ida felt
almost forced to laugh again; but she checked the desire, and said, as
gently and humbly as she could: "I--I beg your pardon, Joseph. I thought it was a--a joke. I am very
sorry. But though you didn't mean it as a jest, it is, of course,
absurd. I don't think you quite know what you were saying; I am quite
sure you don't mean it--"