“No use, Sir. In a town-house you can always do that, but these savages—they are just savages—in the country, think they are bound to their masters, body and soul.”
“What a mistake, Tom,” said the other, with a twinkle of the eye.
“Well, Sir, it’s a mistake when a man does not love his master;” and Mr. Fisk turned away and drew his hand across his eyes.
The grin upon young Mr. Ladarelle’s face was not a very flattering commentary on this show of feeling, but he did not speak for some minutes. At last he said: “He presented her to my governor as Mademoiselle O’Hara, saying, ‘My ward;’ and she received us as calmly as if she owned the place. That’s what puzzles me, Tom—her cool self-possession.”
“It ain’t nat’ral, Sir; it ain’t, indeed!”
“It is the sort of manner a man’s wife might have, and not even that if she were very young. It was as good as a play to see how she treated the governor as if he had never been here before, and that everything was new to him!”
Mr. Fisk rubbed his hands and laughed heartily at this joke.
“And as for myself, she scarcely condescended to acknowledge me.”
“Warn’t that too imperent, Sir?”
“It was not gracious, at all events, but we’ll know more of each other before the week is over. You’ll see.”