Runaway

account for him? Ministers’ families move so much that he would never have time to get in with a gang that grows up together to understand and fool around with each other.
    I can see him right now holding the door open in his vest and his starchy shirt. Tall and thin as a knife. His neat parted hair and strict moustache. What a disaster.
    I wonder about writing him a note to explain that a joke is not a major offense in my opinion? Or should I just write a dignified sort of apology?
    I can’t consult with Ginny because he proposed to her and that means he thinks of her as a worthier person than I am. And I am in such a mood that I would wonder if she was secretly holding that over me. (Even if she turned him down.)
    Apr. 4. Wilf did not show up at the Reading Club because some old fellow had a stroke. So I wrote him a note. Tried to make it apologetic but not too humble. This nags at me like anything. Not the note but what I did.
    Apr. 12. I got the surprise of my stupid young life answering the door at noon today. Father had just got home and had sat down to dinner and there was Wilf. He never answered the note I wrote him and I had resigned myself that he intended to be disgusted with me forever and all I could do in future was snoot him because I had no choice.
    He asked if he had interrupted my dinner.
    He could not have done that because I have decided to give up eating dinner until I lose five pounds. While Father and Mrs. Box eat theirs I just shut myself up and have a go at Dante.
    I said, no.
    He said, well then, how about coming for a drive with him? We could see the ice go out on the river, he said. He went on and explained that he had been up most of the night and had to open the office at one o’clock, which didn’t give him time for a snooze, and the fresh air would revive him better. He didn’t say why he had been up during the night so I figured it was a baby being born and he thought that might embarrass me if he told me.
    I said I was just getting started on my day’s stint of reading.
    “Give Dante a rest for a while,” he said.
    So I got my coat and told Father and we went out and got in his car. We drove out to the North Bridge where several people, mostly men and boys on their lunch hour, had collected to look at the ice. Not such big chunks of it this year with the winter being so late getting started. Still it was knocking up against the bridge supports and grinding away and making a racket the way it usually does with the little streams of water running in between. There was nothing to do but stand and look at this as if you were mesmerized, and my feet got cold. The ice may be breaking but the winter does not seem to have given up yet and spring seems pretty far away. I wondered how on earth some people could stand there and find this entertaining enough to watch for hours.
    It didn’t take Wilf long to get tired of it either. We got back in the car and were stumped for conversation, till I took the bull by the horns and asked, did he get my note?
    He said yes he had.
    I said I really felt like a fool for what I had done (that was true but perhaps more contrite-sounding than I had meant).
    He said, “Oh, never mind that.”
    He backed the car and we headed into town and he said, “I was hoping to ask you to marry me. Only I wasn’t going to do it like this. I was going to lead up to it more. In a more suitable sort of situation.”
    I said, “Do you mean you were hoping to but now you’re not? Or do you mean that you actually are?”
    I swear that when I said that I was not egging him on. I really just wanted it clarified.
    “I mean I am,” he said.
    “Yes” was out of my mouth before I even got over my shock. I don’t know how to explain it. I said yes in a nice polite way but not too eagerly. More like yes, I’d like a cup of tea. I didn’t even act surprised. It seemed as if I had to get us quickly through this moment and then we could just be relaxed and normal. Though the fact was that I had never been exactly relaxed and normal with Wilf. At one time I was rather mystified by him and thought he was both intimidating and comical, and then since my unlucky April Fool’s I have been just stricken with embarrassment. I hope I am not saying that I said yes I’d marry him to get over the embarrassment. I do remember thinking I should take yes back and say I needed time to think it over, but I could hardly do that without landing us both in a worse muddle of