Nothing But the Truth

“You’re tickling,” said Bob ill-naturedly.

She stopped trailing and patted instead – very gently and carelessly – as if she were patting a big Newfoundland dog which she owned all by herself. That pat expressed a sense of ownership.

“I’m wondering,” she said, “whether it would make things nicer, if I did propose and we became engaged?”

“Oh,” said Bob satirically, “you’re wondering that, are you?”

“Yes.” More tentative pats.

“And what do you suppose I’d say?” he demanded. He was feeling more and more grouchy all the time. He didn’t want any of that “superwoman” business. He had already had one proposal. What mockery! A proposal! He heard again that other “Will you marry me?” and looked once more, in fancy, into the starry, enigmatical violet eyes. He experienced anew that surging sensation in his veins. And he awoke again to the hollow jest of those words! He felt, indeed, a moderately vivid duplication of all his emotions of the night before. The temperamental young thing’s voice recalled him from the poignant recollections of the painful past into the dreary and monotonous present.

“Why, you actually blushed, just now,” she said accusingly.

“Did I?” growled Bob, looking grudgingly into dark eyes where a moment before, in imagination, there had been starry violet ones.

“Yes, you did. And” – her voice taking a tenderer accent – “it was becoming, too.”

“Rush of blood to the head,” he retorted shortly. “Comes from lying like this.”

“What would you say if I did?” she demanded, reverting to that other topic. “Propose, I mean? Would you accept? Would you take me – I mean, shyly suffer me,” with a giggle, “to take you into my arms?”

“Quit joshing!” growled Bob.

“Answer. Would you?”

“No.”

“No?” Bending over him more closely. For a “super,” she was certainly wonderfully attractive in her slim young way at that moment. Not many of the inferior sex would have acted quite so stonily as Bob acted. He didn’t show any more emotion when she bent over than one of those prostrate stone Pharaohs, or Rameses, which lie around with immovable features on the sands of Egypt. “You see you couldn’t help it,” the super-temperamental young thing assured him, confidentially.

“Ouch!” said Bob, for she was tickling again. He wished she would keep those trailing fingers in her lap. They felt like a fly perambulating his brow or walking around his ear.

“You’d just have to accept me,” she added.

“Oh, you mean on account of that silly burglar business?”

“Of course. You left two or three thumb-prints in the room.”

“I did?” That was incriminating. No getting around thumb-prints! He felt as if the temperamental little thing was weaving a mesh around him. In addition to being a “super,” she was a Lady of Shalott.

Dolly thrilled with a sense of her power. She could play with poor Bob as a cat with a mouse; she could let him go so far and then put out her claws and draw him back.

“Besides, I found out you didn’t quite tell me the truth about those accomplices of yours,” she went on triumphantly. “You said there weren’t any, and when I went out and looked around where the dog barked, I found footprints. They led to the trellis, right up into your room. The trellis, too, showed some person, or persons, had climbed up, for some of the boughs were broken. Deny now, if you can, you had visitors last night,” she challenged him.

Bob didn’t deny; he lay there helpless.

“Of course,” she said with another giggle, “I might let you say you’ll think it over. I might not press you too hard at once for an answer. I don’t want you to reply: ‘This is so sudden,’ or anything like that.” She got up suddenly with a little delirious laugh. “But I simply can’t wait. You look so handsome when you’re cross. Besides, it will be so exciting to be engaged to a – a – ”

“Society-burglar – ” grimly.

“That’s it. I’ve never been engaged to a burglar before!”

“But you have been engaged?”

“Oh, yes. Lots of times. But not like this. This feels as if it might lead – ”

“To the altar?” Satirically.

“Yes.”

“But suppose I got caught? – that is, if I really enjoyed the distinction of being a burglar which I am not?”

“Then, of course, I never knew – you deceived me – poor innocent! – as well as the rest of the world. And there would be columns and columns in the papers. And some people would pity me, but most people would envy me. And I’d visit you in jail with a handkerchief to my eyes and be snap-shotted that way. And I’d sit in a dark corner in the court, looking pale and interesting. And the lady reporters would interview me and they’d publish my picture with yours – ‘Handsome Bob, the swell society yeggman. Member of one of the oldest families, etc.’ And – and – ”

“Great Scott!” cried Bob. She had that publicity-bee worse than Gee-gee. In another moment she’d be setting the day. “Shall we – ah! – retrace our steps?”

It was getting late. The hours had gone by somehow and as she offered no objections, they “retraced.” For some time now she was silent. Perhaps she was imagining herself too happy for words. Once or twice she cast a sidelong glance shyly at Bob. It was the look of a capricious slave-owner metamorphosed, through the power of love, into a yielding and dependent young maiden. Bob was supposed to be the brutal conqueror. Meanwhile that young man strode along unheedingly. He didn’t mind any little branches or bushes that happened to stand in his way and plowed right through them. It would have been the same, if he had met that historic bramble bush. A thousand scratches, more or less, wouldn’t count.

“You can put your arm around me now,” she observed, with another musical but detestable giggle, as they passed through a grove, not very far from the house. “It is quite customary here, you know.”

He didn’t know, but he obeyed. What else could he do?

“Now say something.” Her voice had once more that ownership accent.

“What do you want me to say?” None too graciously.

“The usual thing! Those three words that make the world go around.”

“But I don’t.” Even a worm will turn.

“You will.” Softly.

“I won’t.”

“Oh, yes, you will.” More softly. Then with a sigh: “This is the place. Under this oak, carved all over with hearts and things. Do it.”

“What?” He looked down on lips red as cherries.

“Are you going to?”

“And if I don’t?” he challenged her.

“Finger-prints!” she said. “Footmarks!”

“Oh, well! Confound it.” And he did – the way a bird pecks at a cherry.

She straightened with another giggle. “Our first!” she said.

“Hope you’re satisfied,” he remarked grudgingly.