He stood stooping, indeed, and holding a string in his hand, by what looked like a black gap at the foot of the wall beyond the table.
“To pull it through!” I cried out. “Are we to eat it here?”
He turned his head, as he leaned, to scan me.
“We can take it up under the skylight, if you like,” said he.
“My room!”
A violent retort was on my lips; but something in his face warned me, and it died unuttered. For all his affected humility, there was a masterfulness here I had not guessed. I realised on the instant that I did not know, had never known him. It was not altogether a disagreeable awakening.
I sat down, silent, on one of the stools; and he addressed me again quietly from his place—
“Little sister, you have committed yourself to my care—very properly, I think, and very properly trustful of an elder brother. Do you know my age? I am thirty-four—just double your seventeen; and at least worldly-wise enough to direct you.”
“That is all very well,” I said, half stifled; “but why have you brought me here?”
“Have I not told you?” he answered. “To save you from a wolf, who would have set his teeth in my little white lamb.”