A PROPOSAL
Soon after daybreak the next morning, down a deserted country road, two
thoroughbred horses were galloping neck and neck.
"Gee along, Star," Bobs was shouting. She had lost her hat a mile back
and her short hair, which would ripple, though she tried hard to brush
out the natural curls, was tossed about her head, making her look more
hoidenish than ever.
Dick, on his slender brown horse, gradually won a lead and was a length
ahead when they reached the Twin Oaks, which for many years had been
their trysting place. Roberta and Dick had been playmates and then pals,
squabbling and making up, ever since the pinafore days, more, however,
like two boys than a boy and a girl. Bobs, in fact, never thought of
herself as a young person who in due time would become a marriageable
young lady, and so it was with rather a shock of surprise that she heard
Dick say, when they had drawn their horses to a standstill in the shade
of the wide-spreading trees: "I say, Roberta, couldn't you cut out this
going to work stuff and marry me?"
"Ye gods and little fishes! _Me_ marry you?" Bobs' remark and the
accompanying expression in her round, sunburned face, with its pertly
tilting freckled nose, were none too complimentary.
Dick flushed. "Well, I say! What's the matter with me, anyhow? Anyone
might think, by the way you're staring, that I had said something
dreadful. I'm not deformed, am I? And I've got money enough so you
wouldn't have to work ever and----"
Roberta became a girl at once, a girl with a sincere nature and a tender
heart. Reaching out a strong brown hand, she placed it kindly on the arm
of her friend. "Dicky, boy, forgive me, if--if I was a little astonished
and showed it. Truth is, for so many years I've thought of you as the
playmate I could always count on to fight my battles, that I'd sort of
forgotten that we were grown up enough to even think of marrying. Of
course we aren't grown up enough yet to really marry, for you are only
nineteen, and I'm worse than that, being not yet seventeen. And as for
money, Dick, I'd like you heaps better if you were poor and working your
way, but I know that you meant what you said most kindly. You wanted to
save me from hard knocks, but, Dick, honest Injun, I revel in them. That
is, I suppose I will. Never having had one as yet, I can't speak from
past experience."
Then they rode slowly back to find the hat that had blown off into the
bushes. Dick rescued it, and when he returned it he handed her a spray
from a blossoming wild rose vine.
The lad did not again refer to his offer, and the girl, he noted with an
inward sigh, had evidently forgotten all about it. She was gazing about
her appreciatively. "Dicky boy," she exclaimed, "there's nothing much
prettier than early morning in the country, is there, with the dew still
sparkling--and a meadow lark singing," she added, for at that moment a
joyous song arose from a near-by thicket.
For a time they were silent as they rode slowly back by the way they had
come. Then Dick said, "Bobs, since you love the country so dearly, aren't
you afraid you'll be homesick in that human whirlpool, New York?"
The girl turned toward him brightly. "Perhaps, sometimes," she replied.
"But it isn't far to the country when I feel the need of a deep breath of
fresh air." Then her face saddened as she continued: "Of course we won't
be coming out here any more." She waved toward the vast estate which for
many years had been the home of Vandergrifts. "We couldn't stand it, not
one of us could, to see strangers living where Mother and Father were so
happy. They'll probably change things a lot." Then she added almost
passionately: "I hope they will. Then, if ever I _do_ see it again, it
will not look like the same place."
Dick did not say what was in his heart, but gloomily he realized that if
the girl at his side did not expect ever to return to that neighborhood,
it was quite evident that she would not be his wife, for his home
adjoined that of the Vandergrifts.
When he spoke, his words in no way betrayed his thoughts. "Have you any
idea, Bobs, what you'd like to do, over there in the big city; I mean to
make a living?"
The girl laughed; then sent a merry side glance toward her companion.
"You never could guess in a thousand years," she flung at him, then
challenged; "Try!"
The boy flicked his quirt at the drooping branches of a willow they were
passing, then frankly confessed that he couldn't picture Roberta in any
of the occupations for women of which he had ever heard. Mischievously
she queried, "Wouldn't I make a nice demure saleswoman for ladies'
dresses or----"
"Great guns, _No_!" was the explosive interruption. "Don't put such a
strain on my imagination." Then he laughed gaily, for he was evidently
trying to picture the hoidenish girl mincing up and down in some
fashionable emporium dressed in the latest styles, while women peered at
her through lorgnettes. Bobs laughed with him when he told his thoughts,
then said:
"I'll agree, as a model, I won't do." Then with pretended thoughtfulness
she flicked a fly from her horse's ear. "Would I make a good actress,
Dicky, do you think?"
"You'd make a better circus performer," the boy told her. "I'll never
forget the antics we used to pull, before----"
"Before I realized that I was a girl and _had_ to be ladylike." Bobs
laughed with him, then added merrily, "If it hadn't been for my prunes
and prisms, Sister Gwendolyn, I might _never_ have ceased to be a
tom-boy."
"I hope you never will become like Gwen," Dick said almost fiercely, "or
like my sister Phyllis, either. They're not _our kind_, though I'm sorry
to say it." Then noting a far-away, thoughtful expression which had crept
into the girl's eyes, the lad inquired: "Say, Bobs, have you any idea
_how_ Gwyn _can_ earn a living? You're the sort who can hold your own
anywhere. You'd be willing to work, but Gwyn--well, I can't picture her
as a daily-bread earner."
His companion shook her head; then quite unexpectedly she said: "Dick,
why _didn't_ you fall in love with Gwen? It would have solved her problem
to have had someone nice and rich to take care of her."
"Well, of all the unheard of preposterous suggestions!" The amazed youth
was so astonished that he unconsciously drew rein and stared at the girl.
He knew by her merry laugh that she had said it but to tease, and so he
rode on again at her side. Bobs feared that she had hurt her friend, for
his face was still flushed and he did not speak. Reining her horse close
to his, she again put a hand on his arm, saying with sincere earnestness:
"Forgive me, pal of mine, if I seemed to speak lightly. Honestly, I
didn't mean it--that is, not as it sounded. But I _do_ wish that someone
as nice and--yes, I'll say as rich as you are, _would_ propose to poor
Gwen. You don't know how sorry Gloria and I feel because Gwen has to be
poor with the rest of us." The boy had placed his hand over the one
resting on his arm, but only for a moment. "You see," Bobs explained,
"Glow and I honestly feel that an adventure of a new and interesting kind
awaits us, and, as for little Lena May, money means nothing to her. If
she can just be with Gloria, that is all she asks of Fate."
They had reached the Vandergrift gate and Bobs, drawing rein, reached out
her hand, saying: "Goodbye, Dick." Then, after a hesitating moment, she
added sincerely, "I'm sorry, old pal. I wish I could have said yes--that
is, if it means a lot to you."
The boy held her hand in a firm clasp as he replied earnestly, "I'm not
going to give up hoping, Bobsie. I'll put that question on the table for
a couple of years, but, when I am twenty-one, I'm going to hit the trail
for _wherever_ you are, and ask it all over again. You see if I don't."
"You won't if Eloise Rochester has anything to say about it," was the
girl's merry rejoinder. Then as Bobs turned her horse toward the stables,
she called over her shoulder: "O, I say, Dick, I forgot to tell you the
profession I've chosen. I'm going to a girl detective."