“Yes.”
“But you must choose between us some time, you know,” said Cousin Sol, with mild reproach in his voice.
“I do wish you wouldn’t bother me so!” I cried, getting angry, as women usually do when they are in the wrong. “You don’t care for me much or you wouldn’t plague me. I believe the two of you will drive me mad between you.”
Here there were symptoms of sobs on my part, and utter consternation and defeat among the Barker faction.
“Can’t you see how it is, Sol?” said I, laughing through my tears at his woe-begone appearance. “Suppose you were brought up with two girls and had got to like them both very much, but had never preferred one to the other, and never dreamed of marrying either, and then all of a sudden you are told you must choose one, and so make the other very unhappy, you wouldn’t find it an easy thing to do, would you?”
“I suppose not,” said the student.
“Then you can’t blame me.”
“I don’t blame you, Nelly,” he answered, attacking a great purple toadstool with his stick. “I think you are quite right to be sure of your own mind. It seems to me,” he continued, speaking rather gaspily, but saying his mind like the true English gentleman that he was, “it seems to me that Hawthorne is an excellent fellow. He has seen more of the world than I have, and always does and says the right thing in the right place, which certainly isn’t one of my characteristics. Then he is well born and has good prospects. I think I should be very grateful to you for your hesitation, Nell, and look upon it as a sign of your good-heartedness.”
“We won’t talk about it any more,” said I, thinking in my heart what a very much finer fellow he was than the man he was praising. “Look here, my jacket is all stained with horrid fungi and things. We’d better go after the rest of the party, hadn’t we? I wonder where they are by this time?”
It didn’t take very long to find that out. At first we heard shouting and laughter coming echoing through the long glades, and then, as we made our way in that direction, we were astonished to meet the usually phlegmatic Elsie careering through the wood at the very top of her speed, her hat off, and her hair streaming in the wind. My first idea was that some frightful catastrophe had occurred—brigands possibly, or a mad dog—and I saw my companion’s big hand close round his stick; but on meeting the fugitive it proved to be nothing more tragic than a game of hide-and-seek which the indefatigable Mr. Cronin had organized. What fun we had, crouching and running and dodging among the Hatherley oaks! and how horrified the prim old abbot who planted them would have been, and the long series of black-coated brethren who have muttered their orisons beneath the welcome shade! Jack refused to play on the excuse of his weak ankle, and lay smoking under a tree in high dudgeon, glaring in a baleful and gloomy fashion at Mr. Solomon Barker; while the latter gentleman entered enthusiastically into the game, and distinguished himself by always getting caught, and never by any possibility catching anybody else.