‘Oh, of course—of course,’ says Susan hastily. ‘It is only people who live in the country who ever really care about things like that, and no doubt you—’
‘I don’t believe I know anything at all,’ says Ella, very gently.
‘Well, you know us now, at all events,’ says Carew very happily, with the light and ready manner that belongs to all large families. His tone is a little shy, perhaps—the tone of the boy to the lovely girl, when first love’s young dream dawns upon him; but Susan and Ella take the joke very kindly, and the laughter that follows on it clears the atmosphere.
‘You are Mr. Wyndham’s tenant, aren’t you?’ says Susan.
‘Yes, now’—in a glad and eager voice—‘though at first I wasn’t.’ She pauses here, drawing back, as it were. Has she said too much? Susan, however, has evidently seen nothing in the small admission.
‘I like Mr. Wyndham,’ says she. ‘We all do, indeed. What we are afraid of now is that, as you have the Cottage, we shan’t see so much of him. But perhaps’—gaily—‘you will put him up sometimes, and then we can renew our acquaintance with him.’
Here Carew turns an awful crimson, and casts a glance, meant to annihilate, upon the innocent Susan.
‘I don’t know; I’m not sure,’ says Ella dejectedly. Evidently she has seen as little in Susan’s suggestion as Susan herself. ‘He has only been here once since I came, and Mrs. Denis seems to think he won’t come very often. I wish he would come, and I’m glad you like him, because I like him too.’
Carew here begins to wonder if he ever had liked Wyndham, and on the whole thinks not.
Ella has taken a step towards Susan.