‘Oh, hear to him!’ Miss Ricketty is laughing like a girl.
‘And how is the giant?’
‘Me brother is very well, thank you, sir. An’ he wants to see ye badly about that cricket match in the park. They say that Tim Murphy is goin’ to be very troublesome over it.’
‘Not a bit of it. Tell your brother that I’ve squared the militant Tim, and that he will turn up all right. What charming sweets, Bonnie! I love sweets; don’t you?’
He has made a sign to Miss Ricketty, who is now making up a splendid parcel.
‘Bonnie has had a cake,’ says Susan. She would have said a great deal more if Tommy had been in question. Indeed, then she would have refused distinctly; but Bonnie’s little lovely smiling face, and the joy she knows it will give the gentle child to share Mr. Crosby’s gift with his little brother, stops her. She says nothing more, though it is actual pain to her to have to accept these sweets for her brother from Crosby. It is a debt she owes to Bonnie to suffer thus. But, then, what does she not owe Bonnie?
‘L’appétit vient en mangeant,’ says Crosby. ‘Miss Ricketty, don’t be in such a hurry to tie up that parcel. Bonnie and I want something out of it first.’ He puts a delightful box of chocolate creams on Bonnie’s knee as he speaks, then turns to Susan.
‘I suppose I daren’t offer you anything,’ says he, in a low tone. Miss Ricketty becomes at once absorbed in a bottle of bull’s-eyes.
‘No,’ says Susan gently, ‘thank you.’
‘Not even an apology?’