One day she told her mother that he had asked her to marry him.
"What did you say?" said her mother.
"Oh, I told him I wasn't over-anxious to marry anyone just yet awhile." She paused a little as was her habit between observations. "He took on so that I said he might come to tea on Sunday."
It was an occasion that thoroughly appealed to Athelny.
He rehearsed all the afternoon how he should play the heavy father for the young man's edification till he reduced his children to helpless giggling.
Just before he was due Athelny routed out an Egyptian tarboosh and insisted on putting it on.
"Go on with you, Athelny," said his wife, who was in her best, which was of black velvet, and, since she was growing stouter every year, very tight for her. "You'll spoil the girl's chances."
She tried to pull it off, but the little man skipped nimbly out of her way.
"Unhand me, woman.
Nothing will induce me to take it off.
This young man must be shown at once that it is no ordinary family he is preparing to enter."
"Let him keep it on, mother," said Sally, in her even, indifferent fashion. "If Mr. Donaldson doesn't take it the way it's meant he can take himself off, and good riddance."
Philip thought it was a severe ordeal that the young man was being exposed to, since Athelny, in his brown velvet jacket, flowing black tie, and red tarboosh, was a startling spectacle for an innocent electrical engineer.
When he came he was greeted by his host with the proud courtesy of a Spanish grandee and by Mrs. Athelny in an altogether homely and natural fashion.
They sat down at the old ironing-table in the high-backed monkish chairs, and Mrs. Athelny poured tea out of a lustre teapot which gave a note of England and the country-side to the festivity.
She had made little cakes with her own hand, and on the table was home-made jam.
It was a farm-house tea, and to Philip very quaint and charming in that Jacobean house.
Athelny for some fantastic reason took it into his head to discourse upon Byzantine history; he had been reading the later volumes of the Decline and Fall; and, his forefinger dramatically extended, he poured into the astonished ears of the suitor scandalous stories about Theodora and Irene.
He addressed himself directly to his guest with a torrent of rhodomontade; and the young man, reduced to helpless silence and shy, nodded his head at intervals to show that he took an intelligent interest.
Mrs. Athelny paid no attention to Thorpe's conversation, but interrupted now and then to offer the young man more tea or to press upon him cake and jam.
Philip watched Sally; she sat with downcast eyes, calm, silent, and observant; and her long eye-lashes cast a pretty shadow on her cheek.
You could not tell whether she was amused at the scene or if she cared for the young man.
She was inscrutable.
But one thing was certain: the electrical engineer was good-looking, fair and clean-shaven, with pleasant, regular features, and an honest face; he was tall and well-made.
Philip could not help thinking he would make an excellent mate for her, and he felt a pang of envy for the happiness which he fancied was in store for them.
Presently the suitor said he thought it was about time he was getting along.
Sally rose to her feet without a word and accompanied him to the door.
When she came back her father burst out:
"Well, Sally, we think your young man very nice.
We are prepared to welcome him into our family.
Let the banns be called and I will compose a nuptial song."
Sally set about clearing away the tea-things.
She did not answer.
Suddenly she shot a swift glance at Philip.
"What did you think of him, Mr. Philip?"
She had always refused to call him Uncle Phil as the other children did, and would not call him Philip.
"I think you'd make an awfully handsome pair."
She looked at him quickly once more, and then with a slight blush went on with her business.
"I thought him a very nice civil-spoken young fellow," said Mrs. Athelny, "and I think he's just the sort to make any girl happy."
Sally did not reply for a minute or two, and Philip looked at her curiously: it might be thought that she was meditating upon what her mother had said, and on the other hand she might be thinking of the man in the moon.
"Why don't you answer when you're spoken to, Sally?" remarked her mother, a little irritably.
"I thought he was a silly."
"Aren't you going to have him then?"
"No, I'm not."
"I don't know how much more you want," said Mrs. Athelny, and it was quite clear now that she was put out. "He's a very decent young fellow and he can afford to give you a thorough good home.
We've got quite enough to feed here without you.
If you get a chance like that it's wicked not to take it.
And I daresay you'd be able to have a girl to do the rough work."
Philip had never before heard Mrs. Athelny refer so directly to the difficulties of her life.
He saw how important it was that each child should be provided for.