“Nothing,” said Ken, looking humble. “Patty’s been begging me to be more polite to the goldfish.”
“Nonsense!” laughed Patty; “your manners are above reproach, Ken.”
“Thanks, fair lady,” he replied, with a Chesterfieldian bow, and then the three went away.
“Did I drive off your young friends, Patty?” said Mr. Hepworth, as she returned to the library, where Jane was already setting forth the tea things.
Patty was nonplussed. He certainly had driven them away, but she couldn’t exactly tell him so.
“You needn’t answer,” he said, laughing at her dismayed expression. “I am sorry they don’t like me, but until you show that you don’t, I shall continue to come here.”
“I hope you will,” said Patty, earnestly. “It isn’t that they don’t like you, Mr. Hepworth; it’s that they think you don’t like them.”
“What?”
“Oh, I don’t mean exactly that; but they think that you think they’re children,—almost, and you’re bored by them.”
“I’m not bored by you, and you’re a child,—almost.”