She flared out.
“Of course you know. It’s been perfectly awful. You sit on me and sit on me—and go out by yourself—and fidget at meals when I talk——”
“I say, don’t wake Mother,” he warned her.
Hastily she dropped an octave.
“So I think you might tell me what’s the matter,” she concluded.
“Oh rot, Laura,” said Justin uncomfortably. “What should be the matter?”
He waited a moment for her answer; but she said nothing: was waiting in her turn. He looked at his book.
If he once began reading again....
“I don’t know,” she said hastily, “but there is. You might tell me, Justin.” She put her hand upon his open book, would not budge as he tried politely to move it. “You’ve got to tell me,” she insisted.
It was a very young and ignorant thing to do, crudely provocative if it had not been so utterly unconscious. A woman or an older man would have laughed and understood and found it charming enough. But it annoyed Justin. He hated to be bothered. He had a keen sense of his own dignity. Above all he had a horror of being inveigled into anything approaching sentimentality. And he was out of touch with Laura. He had been prepared for a jolly little girl, not for a young woman with obvious faults and disconcerting garments. He was just too old to label her challenge ‘cheek,’ yet not old enough to make allowances for her hobble-de-hoyhood, to differentiate between impudence and a lack of savoir-faire. Ever since Lucerne he had been, though he had no idea of analysing his attitude, disappointed, on the edge of boredom. He was as unaware as she herself of the beauty of her hand, he merely knew that he didn’t want a great paw sprawling over his book. He wanted to say “Get out!” And she stood there and waited!