Ellen Gilchrist by Ellen Gilchrist

Author:Ellen Gilchrist [GILCHRIST, ELLEN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780316092388
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2009-12-19T05:00:00+00:00

They were offering Lin Tan the moon and he said yes, he would be glad to come and take it. Later that night he asked Margaret very formally to be his wife and she accepted and Big Ted and Jane got on the phone and started calling their friends.

“Do we still have to sleep in separate rooms now that we’re engaged?” Margaret asked her mother, later, when the two of them were down in her mother’s room. “I mean, is it all right if I go in Teddy’s room and sleep with him?”

“Oh, my darling, please don’t ask that. I’m not ready for that.”

“We’re going to be married, Mother. Think how strange it must be for him, being here in this country, with us. I mean, after all.”

“If you want to sleep with him go on and marry him then. We could have a wedding. You could get married while you’re here.” Her mother sank back against the pillows of the bed. It was a huge four-poster bed made from cypress logged on her grandfather’s land. It had been a wedding gift from her parents, a quarter of a century ago, in another place, another time. Margaret’s mother had been the most beautiful girl in that world. She was beautiful still, serene and sure, elegant and kind. Margaret hugged the bedpost. She was always a child in this room. All her life she had come in and hugged this bedpost while she asked questions and made pleas and waited for answers. Never once in her life had she been treated unfairly or unkindly in this room. So she looked upon the world as a place that could be expected to be kind and to be fair.

“It’s too late to get married tonight,” she said. “May we sleep with each other if we’re going to get married tomorrow?”

“I don’t want to discuss this any further,” her mother said. She picked up a magazine and pretended to read it. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

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