"Ah! Pretty?"

He answered faintly:

"I don't know what YOU call pretty, Gordy."

He felt, rather than saw, his guardian scrutinizing him with those
half-closed eyes under their gouty lids.

"All right; do as you like. Have 'em here and have done with it, by all
means."

Did his heart jump? Not quite; but it felt warm and happy, and he said:

"Thanks awfully, Gordy. It's most frightfully decent of you," and turned
again to the Marriage Service. He could make out some of it. In places
it seemed to him fine, and in other places queer. About obeying, for
instance. If you loved anybody, it seemed rotten to expect them to obey
you. If you loved them and they loved you, there couldn't ever be any
question of obeying, because you would both do the things always of your
own accord. And if they didn't love you, or you them, then--oh! then
it would be simply too disgusting for anything, to go on living with a
person you didn't love or who didn't love you. But of course SHE
didn't love his tutor. Had she once? Those bright doubting eyes, that
studiously satiric mouth came very clearly up before him. You could not
love them; and yet--he was really very decent. A feeling as of pity,
almost of affection, rose in him for his remote tutor. It was queer to
feel so, since the last time they had talked together out there, on the
terrace, he had not felt at all like that.