Page:Emily Climbs.pdf/319

utes part of me planted a garden and laid out beautiful closets and bought a dozen solid silver teaspoons and arranged my attic and hemstitched a double damask table-cloth—and the other part of me just waited. Once I said it was a lovely evening—it wasn’t—and a few minutes later I said it looked like rain—it didn’t.

“But one had to say something.

“I'm going to work hard—I’m going to get everything possible out of those two years,’ Teddy said at last, staring at Blair Water and at the sky and at the sandhills, and at the green leisurely meadows, and at everything but me. “Then, perhaps, when they’re up I’ll manage to get to Paris. To go abroad—to see the masterpieces of great artists—to live in their atmosphere—to see the scenes their genius immortalised—all I've been hungry for all my life. And when I come back———’

“Teddy stopped abruptly and turned to me. From the look in his eyes I thought he was going to kiss me—I really did. I don’t know what I would have done if I couldn’t have shut my own eyes.

“‘And when I come back—’ he repeated—stopped again.

“Yes? I said. I don’t deny to this my journal that I said it a trifle expectantly.

“‘I’ll make the name of Frederick Kent mean something in Canada!’ said Teddy.

“I opened my eyes.

“Teddy was looking at the dim gold of Blair Water and scowling. Again I had a feeling that night air was not good for me. I shivered, said a few polite commonplaces, and left him there scowling. I wonder if he was too shy to kiss me—or just didn’t want to.

“I could care tremendously for Teddy Kent if I let myself—if he wanted me to. It is evident he doesn’t want me to. He is thinking of nothing but success and ambition and a career. He has forgotten our exchange of glances in-the old John house—he has forgotten that he told me three years ago, on George Horton’s tombstone,