“Then,” Nancy responded grimly; “he’d much better have kept to the letter of his promise and sent a substitute.”
She was still wandering aimlessly to and fro among the crowd, now jostled by a packed basket on the arm of a sturdy habitant, now whacked on the ankle by a hen dangling limply, head downward, from the hand of the habitant’s wife, now pausing to bargain for a bunch of pale violet sweet peas or a tiny replica of one of the melon-shaped baskets so characteristic of the town. All at once, she turned to the Lady.
“If there isn’t Mr. Barth!” she exclaimed, lapsing, in her surprise, into the unmistakable vernacular of The States.
The Lady was deeply absorbed in her final purchase of the day, which, as it chanced, was a piglet for the morrow’s dinner. Engrossed in the relative merits of a whole series of piglets of varying dimension, she was deaf to Nancy’s words. Left to herself, the girl met Barth with an eager smile.
“Is it peace, or war?” she asked merrily, as she gave him her hand, sweet peas and all.
“Peace, of course. Are the flowers a token of the treaty?”
“Do you want them?”
“Oh, rather!” And Barth pulled off his glove to fasten them into the lapel of his dark blue coat. “I am so sorry to be late, Miss Howard; but Mr. Brock stopped a little, to talk.”
“You have seen Mr. Brock, this morning?”
“Oh, yes. He was in my room.”