“Well, child?” ventured Mother Pounce.
Once more Pamela tossed her head. She was seated at a corner of the kitchen table, needle, scissors, and workbox at her elbow, and she turned and twisted the lilac satin rosette in her hand.
“Well,” she said at last, without looking up. “I don’t happen to want to meet him, that’s all.”
“How, my dear?” Mrs. Pounce shot a frightened glance at her husband’s grim face, and another at her daughter’s bright, bent head.
“Ain’t the young gentleman a friend of yours?” she asked faintly.
Pamela snapped her thread.
“You do want to know a lot, don’t you, mother dear? But there! There’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell you. I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of. That young gentleman has the good taste to admire me a mortal lot, but he ain’t got the good taste, in my opinion, to admire me the right way. He came after me to Canterbury, knowing I was due here for my Christmas holiday, and I sent him packing, and, thinks I, ’tis done now, once for all, and we’ll be the best of friends at a distance. And you could have knocked me down with a feather when I see his black eye roaming round the church this morning. Encourage him by going with you to-night? That would never do, Pamela, my girl! says I to myself, and——”
“What dost mean by the right way, daughter?” interrupted the farmer, who had been ruminating her words, and not found them to his liking. The veins of his forehead were swelled; the hand that gripped the wooden arm of his chair shook.
“I mean the wrong way. Now, father, don’t you be a-working yourself up. I can look after myself, and ain’t that just what I’m doing? Mother, I vow your cap will beat the one I made for the Duchess of Queensberry all to nothing. Now, won’t the children be pleased when they find those cakes all piping hot, mother? They ought to be in soon now—back from Rector’s. I’d like to try the little gown on my poppet ere you put her to rest to-night.”