“Offended! oh no; how could I be offended with you?”
“Because you seem so stern. I am sure I would do anything I could to oblige you, if I knew how. It would be so shocking not to be good friends with a cousin like you.”
“But there are so many different sorts of friends,” said Maurice.
“Of course there are. There are a great many friends that one does not care a bit for,—people that one meets at balls and places like that—”
“And at picnics,” said Maurice.
“Well, some of them there too; but we are not like that; are we?”
What could Maurice do but say, “no,” and declare that their friendship was of a warmer description? And how could he resist promising to go to the picnic, though as he made the promise he knew that misery would be in store for him? He did promise, and then she gave him her hand and called him Maurice.
“Oh! I am so glad,” she said. “It seemed so shocking that you should refuse to join us. And mind and be early, Maurice; for I shall want to explain it all. We are to meet, you know, at Clifton Gate at one o’clock, but do you be a little before that, and we shall be there.”
Maurice Cumming resolved within his own breast as he rode back to Spanish Town, that if Marian behaved to him all that day at the picnic as she had done this day at Shandy Hall, he would ask her to be his wife before he left her.
And Miss Jack also was to be at the picnic.