Knarborough Road, there was Albert stepping forward like a
policeman, and saluting her and smiling down on her.
"I don't know if I'm presuming--" he said, in a mock deferential
way that showed he didn't imagine he _could_ presume.
"Oh, not at all," said Alvina airily. He smiled with assurance.
"You haven't got any engagement, then, for this evening?" he said.
"No," she replied simply.
"We might take a walk. What do you think?" he said, glancing down
the road in either direction.
What, after all, was she to think? All the girls were pairing off
with the boys for the after-chapel stroll and spoon.
"I don't mind," she said. "But I can't go far. I've got to be in at
nine."
"Which way shall we go?" he said.
He steered off, turned downhill through the common gardens, and
proposed to take her the not-very-original walk up Flint's Lane, and
along the railway line--the colliery railway, that is--then back up
the Marlpool Road: a sort of circle. She agreed.
They did not find a great deal to talk about. She questioned him
about his plans, and about the Cape. But save for bare outlines,
which he gave readily enough, he was rather close.
"What do you do on Sunday nights as a rule?" he asked her.
"Oh, I have a walk with Lucy Grainger--or I go down to Hallam's--or
go home," she answered.
"You don't go walks with the fellows, then?"
"Father would never have it," she replied.
"What will he say now?" he asked, with self-satisfaction.
"Goodness knows!" she laughed.
"Goodness usually does," he answered archly.
When they came to the rather stumbly railway, he said:
"Won't you take my arm?"--offering her the said member.
"Oh, I'm all right," she said. "Thanks."
"Go on," he said, pressing a little nearer to her, and offering his
arm. "There's nothing against it, is there?"
"Oh, it's not that," she said.
And feeling in a false position, she took his arm, rather
unwillingly. He drew a little nearer to her, and walked with a
slight prance.
"We get on better, don't we?" he said, giving her hand the tiniest
squeeze with his arm against his side.
"Much!" she replied, with a laugh.
Then he lowered his voice oddly.
"It's many a day since I was on this railroad," he said.
"Is this one of your old walks?" she asked, malicious.
"Yes, I've been it once or twice--with girls that are all married
now."
"Didn't you want to marry?" she asked.
"Oh, I don't know. I may have done. But it never came off, somehow.
I've sometimes thought it never would come off."
"Why?"
"I don't know, exactly. It didn't seem to, you know. Perhaps neither
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