An idea had come into
his mind.
"I have come here courting," he thought; "I have come to ask Mary
Underwood to be my wife and live in my house."
The woman, kneeling by the blazing sticks, made a picture that aroused
something that had been sleeping in him. The heavy cloak she wore, falling
away, showed the round little shoulders imperfectly covered by the kimono,
wet and clinging to them. The slender, youthful figure, the soft grey hair
and the serious little face, lit by the burning sticks caused a jumping of
his heart.
"We are needing a woman in our house," he said heavily, repeating the
words that had been on his lips as he stumbled through the storm-swept
streets and along the mud-covered roads. "We are needing a woman in our
house, and I have come to take you there.
"I intend to marry you," he added, lurching across the room and grasping
her roughly by the shoulders. "Why not? I am needing a woman."
Mary Underwood was dismayed and frightened by the face looking down at
her, and by the strong hands clenched upon her shoulders. In his youth she
had conceived a kind of maternal passion for the newsboy and had planned a
future for him. Her plans if followed would have made him a scholar, a man
living his life among books and ideas.
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