“Oh,” said Ada, “ought we to?” She was seen to tremble on the brink of a delicious temptation, and with difficulty to resist. “I’m afraid,” she decided, “not yet. But father will have finished his sermon by now, and if you came and saw him at once, then... then, Sam...” She eyed him, languishing, and opened up for him the golden vista of a jocund courtship--once Peter had been “seen.” He came, obediently, to see Peter, and she relaxed her standard so far as to take his arm down the drive of Heaton Park. Indeed, just at the corner by the copse, where they were hidden, he had an arm round her waist: his feet trod air, and his head was with the stars. Ada was thinking, “If he gets the engagement ring to-night, I can show it after church to-morrow.” CHAPTER IX--ADA AND A MAD TRAM-CAR |ON general grounds--on the grounds, for instance, of anything so out-of-date and out of reason as filial piety--Ada was quite indifferent to Peter’s “consent,” and wanted it only to shackle Sam more firmly. She had not much doubt that Peter would consent, as in fact he did, though not so readily as she had anticipated. She did not exhibit an engagement ring at church next day for the reason that she had none to exhibit. Peter kept Sam too late for that. Of course Ada was wrong about Peter: she thought him a good man and consequently a perfect fool, whereas his foolishness was imperfect, and he was subject, like most unworldly people, to streaks of acumen about worldly affairs. They come sometimes, these disconcerting fits of perception, as if a dam had burst, and usually the times are inconvenient to those who have reckoned on the unworldliness. Peter answered her expectation so far as to say, “Bless my soul,” and so far only. After that, he began an elaborate and skilful catechism of Sam, which pretended to be a friendly talk about books, but was really an examination of Sam Branstone, his character and disposition. At the beginning Peter knew little of Sam beyond what his observations at the Concentrics had told him, and Sam’s volunteered remarks about his salary and his prospects interested Peter to a very slight extent. At the end Peter decided that Sam was to be trusted to make things easy for Ada on the material side, and that spiritually he was not beyond hope.