"Lonely? Good Heavens, no! I've got too much to do."
Janie glanced at him; what was to be done with a man who treated provocative suggestions as though they were sincere questions? If he had not cared for her now! But she knew he did.
"Well, I've been very dull, anyhow. One never
sees anybody fresh at Fairholme now. It's always either Mr. Tristram or Major Duplay."
"Well, I shouldn't be very fresh either, should I?" The names she mentioned drew no sign from him.
"I don't count you as a visitor at all—and they are visitors, I suppose." She seemed a little in doubt; yet both the gentlemen, at any rate, were not presumably received as members of the family.
"I'll tell you what I've been thinking about," said Bob, speaking slowly, and apparently approaching a momentous announcement.
"Yes," she said, turning to him with interest, and watching his handsome open face; it was not a very clever face, but it was a very pleasant one; she enjoyed looking at it.
"I've been thinking that I'll sell the black horse, but I can't make up my mind whether to do it now or keep him through the summer and sell him when hunting begins. I don't know which would pay me best."
"That certainly is a very important question," remarked Janie, with a wealth of sarcasm.