“Why not?”
“I cannot tell, only they are rich, and grand as people say, and I feel quite small beside them. He doesn’t mean to tell his mother just yet, but the rest of the family are—glad that it is so. But when his Aunt Lucy wrote about Mr. Duncan being here he was in a flame at once. He spoke last summer because he was jealous of Dick Fairlie, and now because he was jealous of Mr. Duncan.”
“Do you like that?” I inquired gravely.
“Well—” reflectively, tying her hair ribbon around the pin-cushion, and going off a step to view it, as if the becomingness of that was the great point for consideration—“yes, I suppose it is best. He thinks so. I do believe I have a slight penchant for—flirting. It is abominable in a clergyman’s daughter! Somehow I do not believe the old Adam has been entirely eradicated in my case. I shall have to go on fighting it awhile longer. And so—if I know he is watching me and will be made miserable over it, I shall be more thoughtful.”
“But if you love him—?”
“It isn’t the love—it is the bits of fun that crop out now and then, and when I laugh, somebody thinks it means something, when it does not. I could not help about Dick, and I was very sorry. I am so glad he has taken to Jennie Ryder. And I know Mr. Duncan never had a thought about marrying me. But it is best to be careful, since there are men in the world.”
“I think you had better come to bed,” I rejoined, much amused at her.
“I suppose I had. Good-bye, moralizing. ‘Be good and you will be happy.’”
But she came and kissed me with rare tenderness.
Mr. Ogden walked home from church with us on Sunday, and came to tea in the evening. He was very bright and gracious and made the children like him.