“No, indeed,” laughed Robert, “and I don’t feel like one.”
“You’ve often been a great anxiety to me,” said Ben, turning to Hilda. “When the mails have been delayed and your letters have not come at their appointed minute, then I have had to suffer. And once you were ill. During that period I was not allowed any peace of mind.”
“In fact, you have had bad times on my account,” she said brightly.
“AND HE HEARD ROBERT ASKING QUESTIONS.”
“Well, I could not bear to see him suffer,” Ben said, laying his arm on Robert’s shoulder. “He is a terrible fellow at taking things to heart. There is no doing anything at all with him.”
“He has suffered quite unnecessarily,” Hilda answered, with that peculiar harsh ring in her voice which again jarred on Ben’s sensitiveness. “I am one of the strong ones of the earth.”
And she looked it. Though tired after the long journey from England, she had the appearance of being in excellent health. Her complexion was dark, and her eyes were brown, but without any softness in them. She was decidedly good-looking, almost beautiful indeed, and strikingly graceful of form and stature. But she impressed Ben as being quite unsympathetic, and all the time he was washing up the tea things and tidying the little kitchen, he found himself harping on this note alone.
And when he had said good-bye to Robert and Hilda, and was hurrying home on his pretty little mare Fanny, he gave vent, in his usual musical fashion, to a vague feeling of disappointment, and kept up a soft accompaniment of swearing to the howling of the wind.