'Don't be in such a fury with a poor fellow that has been driven nearly to desperation!' said William, putting an elbow on the chair where her apparatus stood.
'It was your own fault!' said Robina; she meant it to be sternly, but it was softly. 'I wanted to explain to you, but you never would let me!'
'I did not know that you—I mean, that I felt that I had no right to ask!'
'O Willie!'
'Robina! Robin—dearest! Are you thinking of that evening?—Bah! what's this?' as his start forward upset the chair against him.
'The water I was painting with! Let me wipe it. It is making a green stream over your face!' at which they both laughed hysterically; and what Will tried to do to the hands that were drying his face may be inferred from—'Now, don't! Let me do it properly! Be quiet, let me look!' And as he half sat, half knelt, she turned up his great freckled face with her hand under his chin. 'There's a green drop still in the corner of your left eye! Let me take it out.'
'The last drop of the green-eyed monster, I promise you, Robina. Now, don't you know what they always do to good little boys, who have had their faces washed nice and clean?'
'But you haven't been a good little boy! You were very naughty, making me ever so unhappy!' and, smiling as she was, there was a tear not green in her eye.
'Ah! You could never have been so wretched as I was; not knowing whether what was my deepest earnest was child's play to you, and not daring to ask.'
'Just like me!' she whispered.