The object of his
journey was to ask Mr. John Turnham's formal sanction to his marriage.
Polly accompanied him a little way on his walk. And whenever he looked
back he saw her standing fluttering her handkerchief--a small, solitary
figure on the bare, red road.
He parted from her with a sense of leaving his most precious possession
behind, so close had words made the tie. On the other hand, he was not
sorry to be out of range for a while of the Beamish family's banter.
This had set in, the evening before, as soon as he and Polly returned to
the house--pacing the deck of the little steamer, he writhed anew at
the remembrance. Jokes at their expense had been cracked all through
supper: his want of appetite, for instance, was the subject of a dozen
crude insinuations; and this, though everyone present knew that he had
eaten a hearty meal not two hours previously; had been kept up till he
grew stony and savage, and Polly, trying hard not to mind but red to the
rims of her ears, slipped out of the room. Supper over, Mrs. Bearnish
announced in a loud voice that the verandah was at the disposal of the
"turtle-doves." She no doubt expected them to bill and coo in public, as
Purdy and Matilda had done. On edge at the thought, he drew Polly into
the comparative seclusion of the garden. Here they strolled up and down,
their promenade bounded at the lower end by the dense-leaved arbour
under which they had first met. In its screening shadow he took the kiss
he had then been generous enough to forgo.
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