I flushed angrily. I think it was enough to make any girl angry. It was bad enough to know that I was disfigured by a scratch on my cheek without having a stranger's attention attracted to it, and running a risk besides of a scolding from mother, who came in at the moment. Luckily she did not hear what Deborah had said. She was too much engaged in welcoming her guest, which she did with that gentle dignity that to some might have looked like a want of cordiality, but to me seems, as I look back upon it, to be just what a welcome should be—hospitable without being anxious. But when we were seated at the supper-table she noticed the mark on my face.
"It's only a fall that I got on the marsh," said I, in answer to her inquiry. "It isn't of the slightest consequence."
She said no more, neither did Mr. Harrod. I must say I was grateful to him. He saw that I wished the matter to be forgotten, and he respected my desire; but I have often wondered since, what construction he put upon my behavior. If he thought about me at all, he must have considered me a somewhat extraordinary example of a young lady, but I do not suppose that he did consider me at all. Of course I was nothing but a figure to him; he had plenty to do feeling his level in the new life upon which he had just entered.
I am sure that Mr. Harrod was a very shy and a very proud man. When mother said that she should expect him every evening to sup at the Grange, he refused her invitation with what I thought scant gratitude, although the words he used were civil enough; and when father spoke of his friendship with the squire, he said that he was beholden to the squire for his recommendation, but that he should never consider himself a friend of a man who was in a different station of life to himself.
I think in my heart I admired him for this sentiment, and father should also have approved of it; but if I remember rightly, mother made some quiet rejoinder to the effect that it was not always the people who were on one's own level that were really one's best friends. I recollect that she, who was wont generally to sit and listen, worked hard that evening to keep up the conversation.
Dear mother! whom with the arrogance of youth I had never considered excellent excepting as a housewife or a sick-nurse. County news, the volunteer camp, the drainage of the marsh, the scarcity of well-water, the want of enterprise in the towns-people, the coming elections—dear me, she had them all out, whereas father and I, who had undertaken, as it were, to put our best legs foremost, sat silent and glum. To do myself justice, I had a racking headache, and for once in my life I really felt ill, but I might have behaved better than I did.
Mr. Harrod began to thaw slowly under the influence of mother's kindness. She had such a winning way with her when she chose, that everybody gave way before it; and I noticed that even from the very first, when he was certainly in a touchy frame of mind towards these, his first employers, Mr. Harrod treated mother with just the same reverential consideration that every one always used towards her.
In spite of it all that first evening was not a comfortable time. Father and Mr. Harrod compared notes upon different breeds of cattle and upon different kinds of grains; but there was a restraint upon us all, and I think every one was glad when mother made the move from the table and father lit his pipe. I have no knowledge of how they got on afterwards over their tobacco; when I rose from the table the room swam around me, and if it had not been for Deborah, who, entering on some errand at the moment, took me by the shoulders and pushed me out of the door in front of her, I am afraid I should have made a most unusual and undignified exhibition of myself in the Grange parlor. As it was I had to submit to be tucked up in bed by the old woman, and only persuaded her with the greatest difficulty not to tell mother of my accident, some account of which, as was to be expected, she wrung from me in explanation of Mr. Harrod's words in the parlor.
"I'd not have been beholden to him if I could have helped it," were the consoling words with which she left me; and as I lay there, aching and miserable, I became quite convinced that any comradeship between myself and my father's bailiff had become all the more impossible because of the occurrence of the afternoon.