And I was going to interfere; but I saw that there was no need. Maimie gave one look at Jack, and then turned her eyes full upon Cress, with a kind of dignified reproach. As she did so, she drew up the sleeve of her right arm, and showed the large bruise there, becoming now a cloud of purple and yellow.
“You don’t mean to say you haven’t forgiven me that yet,” Cress said testily.
“You have never asked me to forgive you.”
“It was a mere accident. If you had not come between—”
“Yes. But a gentleman always begs pardon for even the merest accident, which this was not,” she said, in a marked manner.
“It was an accident, Maimie.”
“It was temper, Cress.”
Cress flung himself out of the room in a pet, and did not appear again for a good while. Maimie looked thoughtful after his departure. “Cress is very rude and disagreeable,” she said at length. “He wants setting to rights. But perhaps I am not the best person to do it.”
“He will stand more from you than from anybody,” Cherry remarked.
“No, I think not. I think that the less I have to do with Cress the better, just now.”