"You will let me accompany you?" said Cuthbert, eagerly, while Nora looked a little bit inclined to pout at her sister's serious tone. "It is, as you say, rather late; and you have a long walk before you."
"Thank you, but I could not think of troubling you. My sister and I are quite accustomed to going about by ourselves. We escort each other," said Janetta, smiling, so that he should not set her down as utterly ungracious.
"I am a good walker," said Cuthbert, coloring a little. He was half afraid that they thought his lameness a disqualification for accompanying them. "I do my twenty miles a day quite easily."
"Thank you," Janetta said again. "But I could not think of troubling you. Besides, Nora and I are so well used to these woods, and to the road between them and Beaminster, that we really do not require an escort."
A compromise was finally effected. Cuthbert walked with them to the end of the wood, and the girls were to be allowed to pursue their way together along the Beaminster road. He made himself very agreeable in their walk through the wood, and did not leave them, without a hope that he might be allowed one day to call upon his newly-discovered cousins.
"He has adopted us, apparently, as well as yourself," said Nora, as the two girls tramped briskly along the Beaminster road. "He seems to forget that we are not his relations."
"He is very pleasant and friendly," said Janetta.
"But why did you say he might call?" pursued Nora. "I thought that you would say that we did not have visitors—or something of that sort."
"My dear Nora! But we do have visitors."
"Yes; but not of that kind."