“I want to ask all sorts of favours of you, Mr. Andrews.” She paused, with her pretty head perked on one side. It was her fashion to request favours with this little flirt and smile which suggested, with guileless conceit, that to serve any one so beautiful and so young was payment enough and to spare for any man in Roseborough. Little did she remember at this moment, however, the results of that same perking from her father’s farm gate, when Hibbert Mearely had asked her to tell him if he had, or had not, taken the wrong turning at the bridge.
“Mrs. Mearely!” (He would dare to believe it blue. He would act as if it were blue!)
“What on earth is the matter with the poor man? He’ll be as red as a beanflower in a minute,” ran through her mind. Aloud she said: “I know you are making your collecting rounds and you will pass Dr. Wells’s and Mr. Howard’s and also Judge Giffen’s. Will you deliver a message at each house for me?”
A gulp was the only reply, for a second or two. It meant that Mr. Andrews was done with “dumb yearnin’.” (The dress was, unquestionably, blue.)
“Mrs. Mearely! I beg you to listen to what I am about to say.” The words tumbled out pell-mell, now that he knew blue for what it was; in Mrs. Bunny’s phrase, they “bust out.” “I will take any message of yours, every message, wherever and whither you may send it. I shall be honoured—nay, more, pleased.”
Surely she could not mistake such ardour! he had declared himself, and as a man of honour, would stand by this avowal. He waited breathlessly for her answer.
“Splendid!” She clapped her hands. “Then you shall ask the Wellses and the Judge and Wilton to come for cards this evening. Mrs. Witherby and her daughter and niece are coming; and Mrs. Lee, who has some news for us all. You will come, of course, won’t you? I am relying on you.”
(She was relying on him—in blue!)
“Mrs. Mearely!”
“Well, then, say that you will,” she prompted, inwardly provoked by what she regarded as a stupid man’s more than usually dense mood, and remembering that it would be wise to peep into the oven to see how Dom Paradis’s “goodlie hearte’s” cake was behaving in a modern cook stove.