flowing past—one stream leaving work and the other coming into town for the evening’s pleasures, most of which were condensed into this main street. The business quarters, where Pat’s father and brother worked—an engineer and solictor’s clerk respectively—were more on the outskirts, beyond which again lay the suburban regions.
“What about this surprise?” Pat insisted after a while.
“I’m coming to it,” Keith replied calmly—and so often before had he excited her interest and then refused to gratify it for long enough afterwards, that Pat wondered whether he did it for fun or from some mistaken sense of superiority.
They walked a little farther. Pride kept Pat from asking again about the surprise. When presently she did speak, she had changed the subject entirely.
“Keith—”
“Yes? What?” He turned to look at her. Yes, he was certainly handsome. Grey eyes, straight nose, well-shaped mouth and chin, black hair catching the sunlight. The only pity was that he was not tall. Pat had the advantage by an inch.
“I’ve been thinking, Keith,” Pat said slowly. “We take this walk home every working day, and at weekends we just take a longer walk. I mean, as it stands there isn’t much future in it, is there?”
“Isn’t much future in anything if it comes to that,” he told her, and his mood had abruptly changed to deepest gloom. “Austerity, shortages, miseries—do without this; do without that. I’m sick of it!”
“Who isn’t? And that doesn’t answer the question.”
“About us?” He reflected. “No, it doesn’t.”
He said no more for the moment, and Pat gave a little sigh to herself as they continued walking. This was one thing about Keith Robinson that she had always found difficult to tolerate—his queer changes of mood without any apparent reason; and at times his studied refusal to answer simple questions. It was as though he occasionally shut up inside himself and became oblivious to the outer world. However, according to Pat’s reckoning, no man can be perfect, so she was prepared to make allowances. After all, he was handsome. She blamed his occupation for his lapses into absentmindedness. He was a costings clerk at the main railway goods station. She found herself wondering if figures could make one behave queerly.
“We can settle it, of course!” Keith said suddenly, as they turned a corner.
“Settle what?” Pat came out of her thoughts with a start. “There you go again! Suddenly begin saying things and I haven’t the remotest idea what you mean—”
“About us,” he intervened, and his grey eyes glanced at her and then away again. “I agree there isn’t any point in just walking about, beyond the fact that we seem to enjoy each other’s company. It’s a build-up, really. We both know what should come of it, and I think it’s time it did. That,” he added, with an odd little smile, “is the surprise I mentioned. I’m not much good at talking. I get sort of mixed up and then I just— Oh, here!” he broke off, digging into his jacket. “This’ll explain better than I can!”
They had walked a further twenty yards before he finished rooting in his pocket, then a small, square, leather-surfaced box lay in the centre of his slender palm. Pat gazed at it in fascination, knowing quite well what was coming. Keith’s finger and thumb snapped open the box lid. The bright evening sun set a three-stone diamond ring glittering.
“Why, Keith, it’s—”
Pat stopped as he snapped the lid shut again. She halted because he did. His grey eyes were watching her intently, and it was as though he were trying to read something deep down within her. It was a stare of abysmal quality that disturbed Pat, though not for a moment did she betray her reaction.
“At least,” she said, trying to sound offhand, “you might have let me look at it properly!”
“I will,” he said quietly. “And I know just what you were going to say when you glimpsed it. It’s wonderful! And all the other variations on the word. It ought to be! I’ve pinched and scraped good and hard to get it. Twenty-five pounds, to be exact.… I want to be sure my twenty-five pounds hasn’t been wasted.”
“Wasted!” Indignation flashed into Pat’s dark eyes. “Well, of all the confounded—”
“Hear me out,” he interrupted. “As I told you, I’m a rotten talker. I get kind of—” he hesitated and looked vague— “mixed up.… Anyway, I want to know something. Am I the only chap?”
Pat’s heightened colour faded and the resentment went out of her eyes. She gave a laugh that had a touch of incredulity in it.
“The only chap? Well, of course! Haven’t we been walking out together for months?”
“Sure we have, but.…”
Keith shook his head dubiously over a thought and began walking again. Perforce Pat had to follow him. Finally she came beside him. They passed from the main road into a side street. It was quiet here; only an occasional passer-by. Keith bit his underlip slowly and considered the paving stones. He was tossing the ring case up and down in his palm.
“I’ve an infernally jealous nature, you know,” he said suddenly.
“I know,” Pat agreed. “But then, we’ve all got something.”
He ignored her effort to smooth the situation. “We’ve walked out together, yes, and become attached to each other. But what about Billy Cranston—and that chap Cliff Evans? They’ve been very chummy with you. I can’t help remembering that.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.” Pat’s attitude stiffened. It had occurred to her that there were limits as to how far she was prepared to make concessions. Her voice sounded curt. “Look here, Keith, if this is a proposal, it’s about as gentle as tipping a bushel of potatoes over my head! I’m not going to account to you for the various boys with whom I’ve been friendly—”
“All right!” he interrupted, his voice hard. “I just can’t help asking: I’m sort of funny that way. You see, Pat, I love you so much I don’t want to have the feeling later on that I gave you my—er—all, so to speak, only to find that you would really rather have teamed up with Billy Cranston or Cliff Evans.”
“That’s so absurd it isn’t worth commenting upon,” Pat retorted. Then she shook her head slowly. “You’re a queer chap, Keith; you seem to have more moods than a film star. Any girl not knowing you as well as I do would have been ready to slap your face for the things you’ve said—but somehow I’m not feeling that way. I’m…used to you, I suppose.”
Keith smiled. The gloomy mood that had been pervading him suddenly vanished. He took the ring from the case and slipped it on her finger.
“That seals the bargain,” he said. “Next thing we have to do is to see how our respective parents react. Not that it matters, anyway, since we’re over twenty-one, but I suppose one must try and get co-operation if at all possible.”
Pat admired the ring as they strolled along in the general direction of her home.
“There won’t be any difficulty as far as my folks are concerned,” she said. “And you’ve only your dad to worry about, haven’t you?”
“Uh-huh—and it’s more than enough.”
Pat did not comment. Her thoughts had clouded for a moment. She had suddenly realized the kind of man she would have for a father-in-law. Ambrose Robinson lived in an aura of austerity that would have made any Government official jealous. It was entirely self-imposed. He was the plain-living, strait-laced type, obnoxiously proud of the fact that he never smoked, drank, or swore, and that he knew his Bible from cover to cover. Nothing wrong with this, of, course, except the fact that his seeming piety was flavoured with an intense bitterness towards the world in general and his son in particular.
“We shan’t live with Dad, anyway,” Keith said, and Pat knew he had