“We got chatting about you, my ownest,” said Marmaduke; “and the subject was so sweet, and the moments were so fleet, that we talked for quite an hour on the strict q.t. Eh, Marian?”
“As a punishment, you shall have no lunch. Mamma is very angry with you both.”
“Always ready to make allowances for her, provided she sends you to lecture me, Conny. Why dont you wear your hat properly?” He arranged her hat as he spoke. Constance laughed and blushed. Marian shuddered. “Now youre all that fancy painted you: youre lovely, youre divine. Are you ready for Bushy Copse?”
Constance replied by singing:
“Oh yes, if you please, kind sir, she said; sir, she said; sir, she said;
Oh! yes if you ple—ease, kind sir, she said.”
“Then come along. After your ladyship,” he said, taking her elbows as if they were the handles of a wheelbarrow, and pushing her out before him through the narrow entrance to the summer-house. On the threshold he turned for a moment; met Marian’s reproachful eyes with a wink; grinned; and disappeared.
For half an hour afterward Marian sat alone in the summer-house, thinking of the mistake she had made. Then she returned to the Cottage, where she found Miss McQuinch writing in the library, and related to her all that had passed in the summer-house. Elinor listened, seated in a rocking-chair, restlessly clapping her protended ankles together. When she heard of Conolly’s relationship to Susanna, she kept still for a few moments, looking with widely opened eyes at Marian. Then, with a sharp laugh, she said:
“Well, I beg his pardon. I thought he was another of that woman’s retainers. I never dreamt of his being her brother.”
Marian was horror stricken. “You thought—! Oh, Nelly, what puts such things into your head?”
“So would you have thought it if you had the least gumption about people. However, I was wrong; and I’m glad of it. However, I was right about Marmaduke. I told you so, over and over and over again.”