" I've got something important to tell you, father,"
said she,
but i don't quite know how to say it."
"Something important ? " repeated the professor. He was
not habitually interested in the affairs of his family, but this
proclamation that something important could be connected
with them, filled his mind with a capricious interest. "Well,
what is it, Marjory ? "
She replied calmly: " Rufus Coleman wants to marry me."
"What?" demanded the professor loudly. "Rufus Coleman.
What do you mean? "
The girl glanced furtively at him. She did not seem to be able
to frame a suitable sentence.
As for the professor, he had, like all men both thoughtless
and thoughtful, told himself that one day his daughter would
come to him with a tale of this kind. He had never forgotten that
the little girl was to be a woman, and he had never forgotten
that this tall, lithe creature, the present Marjory, was a woman.
He had been entranced and confident or entranced and
apprehensive according' to the time. A man focussed upon
astronomy, the pig market or social progression, may
nevertheless have a secondary mind which hovers like a spirit
over his dahlia tubers and dreams upon the mystery of their
slow and tender revelations. The professor's secondary mind
had dwelt always with his daughter and watched with a faith
and delight the changing to a woman of a certain fat and
mumbling babe. However, he now saw this machine, this self-
sustaining, self-operative love, which had run with the ease of a
clock, suddenly crumble to ashes and leave the mind of a great
scholar staring at a calamity.
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