My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin [ebook offline .TXT] 📗

“Not just yet; that is what I want to say to you. We will have three months’ probation to see how we get on. At the end of that time, if we manage to sail along smoothly, we’ll have the real thing; until then we will not be any more than we have been to each other.”

“But what am I to do in the meantime?” he asked, with amusement curving the corners of his mouth.

“Do! Do the usual thing, of course; but don’t pay me any special attentions, or I’ll be done with you at once.”

“What’s your idea for this?”

“It is no use making fools of ourselves; we might change our minds.”

“Very well; so be it,” he said laughing. “I might have known you would have things arranged different from any other girl. But you’ll take the ring and wear it, won’t you? Let me put it on.”

“No; I won’t let you put a finger on me till the three months are up. Then, if we definitely make up our minds, you can put it on; but till then, don’t for the life of you hint by word or sign that we have any sort of an arrangement between us. Give me the ring and I’ll wear it sometimes.”

He handed it to me again, and I tried it on. It was a little large. Harold took it, and tried to put it on one of his fingers. It would fit on none but the very top of his little finger. We laughed heartily at the disparity in the size of our hands.

“I’ll agree to your bargain,” he said. “But you’ll be really engaged to me all the same.”

“Yes; under those conditions. Then it will not matter if we have a tiff. We can part, and no one will be the wiser.”

On my suggesting that it was now time to go to the house, he swung himself down by a branch and turned to assist me. Descending from that tree was a feat which presented no difficulties to me when no one was by, but now it seemed an awkward performance.

“Just lead your horse underneath, so that I can get on to his back, thence to the ground quite easily,” I said.

“No fear! Warrigal wouldn’t stand that kind of dodge. Won’t I do? I don’t think your weight will quite squash me,” he returned, placing himself in leapfrog position, and I stepped on to his back and slid from there to the ground quite easily.

That afternoon, when leaving the house, I had been followed by one of the dogs, which, when I went up the willow-tree, amused himself chasing water lizards along the bank of the creek. He treed one, and kept up a furious barking at the base of its refuge. The yelping had disturbed grannie where she was reading on the veranda, and coming down the road under a big umbrella to see what the noise was about, as luck would have it she was in the nick of time to catch me standing on Harold Beecham’s back. Grannie frequently showed marked displeasure regarding what she termed my larrikinism, but never before had I seen her so thoroughly angry. Shutting her umbrella, she thrust at me with it, saying, “shame! shame! You’ll come to some harm yet, you immodest, bold, bad hussy! I will write to your mother about you. Go home at once, miss, and confine yourself in your room for the remainder of the day, and don’t dare eat anything until tomorrow. Spend the time in fasting, and pray to God to make you better. I don’t know what makes you so forward with men. Your mother and aunt never gave me the slightest trouble in that way.”

She pushed me from her in anger, and I turned and strode housewards without a word or glancing behind. I could hear grannie deprecating my conduct as I departed, and Harold quietly and decidedly differing from her.

From the time of my infancy punishment of any description never had a beneficial effect upon me. But dear old grannie was acting according to her principles in putting me through a term of penance, so I shut myself in my room as directed, with goodwill towards her at my heart. I was burning with shame. Was I bold and immodest with men, as accused of being? It was the last indiscretion I would intentionally have been guilty of. In associating with men I never realize that the trifling difference of sex is sufficient to be a great wall between us. The fact of sex never for an instant enters my head, and I find it as easy to be chummy with men as with girls: men in return have always been very good, and have treated me in the same way.

On returning from her walk grannie came to my room, brought me some preachy books to read, and held out to me the privilege of saying I was sorry, and being restored to my usual place in the society of the household.

“Grannie, I cannot say I am sorry and promise to reform, for my conscience does not reproach me in the least. I had no evil⁠—not even a violation of manners⁠—in my intentions; but I am sorry that I vexed you,” I said.

“Vexing me is not the sinful part of it. It is your unrepentant heart that fills me with fears for your future. I will leave you here to think by yourself. The only redeeming point about you is, you do not pretend to be sorry when you are not.”

The dear old lady shook her head sorrowfully as she departed.

The afternoon soon ran away, as I turned to my bookcase for entertainment and had that beautiful ring to admire.

I heard them come in to tea, and I thought Harold had gone till I heard uncle Jay-Jay address him:

“Joe Archer told me you ran into a clothesline on race-night, and ever since then mother has