“I should like to,” Edwin answered diffidently.
“Would you come in some evening and see us? Mother would be delighted. We all should.”
“Very kind of you.” In his diffidence he was now standing on one leg.
“Could you come to-night? ... Or to-morrow night?”
“I’m afraid I couldn’t come to-night, or to-morrow night,” he answered with firmness. A statement entirely untrue! He had no engagement; he never did have an engagement. But he was frightened, and his spirit sprang away from the idea, like a fawn at a sudden noise in the brake, and stood still.
He did not suspect that the unconscious gruffness of his tone had repulsed her. She blamed herself for a too brusque advance.
“Well, I hope some other time,” she said, mild and benignant.
“Thanks! I’d like to,” he replied more boldly, reassured now that he had heard again the same noise but indefinitely farther off.
She departed, but by the front door, and hatless and dignified up Trafalgar Road in the delicate sunshine to the next turning. She was less vivacious.
He hoped he had not offended her, because he wanted very much—not to go in cold blood to the famed mansion of the Orgreaves—but by some magic to find himself within it one night, at his ease, sharing in brilliant conversation. “Oh no!” he said to himself. “She’s not offended. A fine girl like that isn’t offended for nothing at all!” He had been invited to visit the Orgreaves! He wondered what his father would say, or think. The unexpressed basic idea of the Clayhangers was that the Clayhangers were as good as other folks, be they who they might. Still, the Orgreaves were the Orgreaves... In sheer absence of mind he remounted the muddy stairs.