"He is in trouble, like me," was her quick thought. "Perhaps his grandfather is a hard, cruel old man, and drives everything he loves out of doors, without caring how he may feel about it, or perhaps—"
Clara might have gone on conjecturing all sorts of possibilities; but that moment the train stopped at a small town, and close by the station she saw an old woman, with a pile of crimson-cheeked peaches and some pears on a table beside her. An exclamation broke from her, and she leaned eagerly forward just as the carriage-door was unlocked.
"Oh, how splendid! such peaches! such pears!" she exclaimed, feeling in the pocket of her sacque for some loose money, which she usually carried there. "Oh! Margaret—"
Here she turned to the woman next her, and blushed with vexation when she remembered that Margaret was no longer there to take her commands.
"Dear me! I forgot. No matter. Oh, mercy! what have I done?"
She had done nothing but what was most likely to obtain her object, for Lord Hilton had pushed open the door, leaped out, and in a minute or two returned with his hands full of the peaches and pears she had craved so. She was blushing scarlet when he came back and dropped the luscious fruit into her lap, as if they had been acquainted fifty years.
"Oh, you are too kind! I did not mean—I did not expect; but please eat some yourself. Here is a splendid one. Mrs. Judson, take pears or peaches, just as you like—delicious!"
The mellow sound of this last word was uttered as her white teeth sank into the crimson side of a peach, and for the next minute she said nothing, but gave herself up to a child-like ecstasy of enjoyment, for the road was dusty, and this luxurious way of quenching her thirst was far too sweet for words. Besides, her companions were just as pleasantly employed. She saw the young man wiping a drop of amber juice from his beard, and wondered where the Abigail found her self-command as she watched her slowly peeling one of the finest pears with a silver fruit-knife which she took from her traveling satchel.
"Splendid, aint they?" she said, at length, leaning forward and tossing a peach-stone out of the window, while she searched the golden and crimson heap with her disengaged hand for another peach, mellow and juicy as the last. "I had no idea anything on earth could be so delightful. We had breakfast so early, and I do believe I was almost hungry. Oh, how pleasant it must be when one is really famished!"
Here Clara cast another peach-stone through the window, and began to trifle with a pear, just as Judson cut a dainty slice from the fruit she had been preparing. Clara laughed, and reached a handful of fruit over to the gentleman who had made her a gift of the whole. He received it cheerfully—in fact, it was quite impossible for any man under thirty to have spent a half hour in that young girl's society without feeling the heart in his bosom grow softer and warmer.