She thought a moment before she answered him and then she said, "Nothing. What should I have to tell?" she added trying to laugh.
He remained for a few minutes silent, and then put his head out towards her as he spoke. "I was afraid that you might have to tell that you were engaged to marry Mr. Twentyman."
"I am not."
"Oh!—I am so glad to hear it."
"I don't know why you should be glad. If I had said I was, it would have been very uncivil if you hadn't declared yourself glad to hear that."
"Then I must have been uncivil for I couldn't have done it. Knowing how my aunt loves you, knowing what she thinks of you and what she would think of such a match, remembering myself what I do of you, I could not have congratulated you on your engagement to a man whom I think so much inferior to yourself in every respect. Now you know it all,—why I was angry at the bridge, why I was hardly civil to you at your father's house; and, to tell the truth, why I have been so anxious to be alone with you for half an hour. If you think it an offence that I should take so much interest in you, I will beg your pardon for that also."
"Oh, no!"
"I have never spoken to my aunt about it, but I do not think that she would have been contented to hear that you were to become the wife of Mr. Twentyman."
What answer she was to make to this or whether she was to make any she had not decided when they were interrupted by the reappearance of the old lady and the bird. She was declaring to the guard at the window, that as she had paid for a first-class seat for her parrot she would get into any carriage she liked in which there were two empty seats. Her bird had been ill-treated by some scurrilous ill-conditioned travellers and she had therefore returned to the comparative kindness of her former companions. "They threatened to put him out of the window, sir," said the old woman to Morton as she was forcing her way in.
"Windersir, windersir," said the parrot.