"Why should she want anybody else?" his mother demanded.
"Why should she want me? But I can't see my future without her. And she's all linked up with my past. I love her childhood and her little-girlhood. No other man will ever see her as I have seen her."
He was in dead earnest. And they met his earnestness with their own.
"We'll miss you for the holidays," his mother said. "But you'd better go."
So it was settled. None of them was very practical. Crispin couldn't be married for a year or two at the best. But a woman who loved him would wait. Hildegarde was his, and he was going to tell her so. It all sounded simple.
But it really wasn't so simple as it sounded.
Crispin's letter came to Round Hill on a snowy morning. Sampson put it on Hildegarde's tray, and it lay there while he made her toast and boiled her egg.
Delia, upstairs, was drawing water for Hildegarde's bath and singing in a voice of poignant sweetness.
Hildegarde, listening, felt that it was delicious and delightful to lie in bed and have Delia wait on her. Delia had taken on her duties of lady's maid voluntarily. When Hildegarde had protested, she had said,
"I ain't doin' it, Honey-chile, because you likes it, but because I does."
