Rose repeated: "Rodney Aldrich and I are going to be married."

But when she saw a look of painful incomprehension in her mother's face,
she sat down on the arm of the chair, slid a strong arm around the
fragile figure and hugged it up against herself.

"I suppose," she observed contritely, "that I ought to have broken it
more gradually. But I never think of things like that."

As well as she could, her mother resisted the embrace.

"I can't believe," she said, gripping the edge of her desk with both
hands, "that you would jest about a solemn subject like that, Rose, and
yet it's incredible!... How many times have you seen him?"

"Oh, lots of times," Rose assured her, and began checking them off on
her fingers. "There was the first time, in the street-car, and the time
he brought the books back, and that other awful call he made one
evening, when we were all so suffocatingly polite. You know about those
times. But three or four times more, he's come down to the
university--he's great friends with several men in the law faculty, so
he's there quite a lot, anyway--but several times he's picked me up, and
we've gone for walks, miles and miles and miles, and we've talked and
talked and talked. So really, we know each other awfully well."

"I didn't know," said her mother in a voice still dull with astonishment,
"that you even liked him. You've been so silent--indifferent--both times
he was here to call...."