"Why not suitable?" asked he.
"Mother bought it at the great Exhibition in '52," said I.
But the real cause of the awkwardness of my feeling had arisen from the fact that I felt unlike myself in a "party frock," and not at all from any fear that the frock might be old-fashioned.
"Oh! and Miss Hoad considers that an objection, I suppose," smiled he. "Well, I don't. There's only one thing I don't like," added he, in his most downright manner. "I don't like the trinkets. You're too young for trinkets."
He had felt it. He had felt just what I had felt—that it was unsuitable for a girl like me to be dressed up.
"You mean the corals," said I; and my voice sank a little, for I was proud of the corals too, and pleased that mother should have given them to me.
"Yes," he answered. "They are very pretty; but," he added, gently, "a young girl's neck is so much prettier."
We waltzed round two turns without speaking. Then he said abruptly, "Perhaps, by-the-way, I ought not to have said that, but I think such old friends as we are may say anything to one another, mayn't we?"
"Why, of course," said I, rather surprised.
The speech was not at all like one of the squire's. I had always thought that he said just whatever he liked to any of us. But to be sure, until the other evening, he had never spoken very much to me at all.