“Toys have a kindly mission, and I may be good for nothing else; but I would have rather been a coffee-pot than a china shepherdess.”
The gaiety disconcerted him, and he seemed to try to be silent, or to reply in the same tone, but he could not help returning to the subject. “Then you find no charm in the refinements to which you have been brought up?”
“Only too much,” said Meta.
He was silent, and fearing to have added to his fine-lady impression, she resumed. “I mean that I never could dislike anything, and kindness gives these things a soul; but, of course, I should be better satisfied, if I lived harder, and had work to do.”
“Meta!” he exclaimed, “you tempt me very much! Would you?—No, it is too unreasonable. Would you share—share the work that I have undertaken?”
He turned aside and leaned against a tree, as if not daring to watch the effect of the agitated words that had broken from him. She had little imagined whither his last sayings had been tending, and stood still, breathless with the surprise.
“Forgive me,” he said hastily. “It was very wrong. I never meant to have vexed you by the betrayal of my vain affection.”
He seemed to be going, and this roused her. “Stay, Norman,” exclaimed she. “Why should it vex me? I should like it very much indeed.”
He faced suddenly towards her—“Meta, Meta! is it possible? Do you know what you are saying?”
“I think I do.”