I said coldly: "I don't see any sense or use in our standing here quarrelling like this, all about nothing, on such a lovely afternoon, and all. Hadn't you better find your hostess?"
"Perhaps I had," said Mr. Burke, without moving.
I was determined he should move!
I said: "I will come a little of the way with you."
"And what about the rugs and things here?"
"I shan't lose sight of them."
"Oh."
In silence we moved off over the turf. And, ridiculous as it was, each of us kept up that resentful silence until, far off on the green downs, we saw moving towards us three specks of colour: a light grey speck between a pink and a blue speck.
"There they are," I told him. "Miss Vassity and my mistress and her cousin."
"Give me your moral support, then; don't run away till I've said good afternoon to them," Mr. Burke said, as if in an agony of shyness. And then the blue imps came back to sweep the resentment out of his eyes. He looked down at me and said: "Child! Think me all that's bad, if you want to. Enlarge upon the affecting 'pity' of it that I didn't stay out day-labouring in Canada, instead of wangling my keep out of fools at home, to whom I'm well worth all the cash I cost 'em! Go on despising me. But listen. Give me credit for one really high-principled action, Miss Lovelace!"