She walked across to the ball in play and saw her father.
“Come and play, father,” she said.
“No, dear; thanks. I must go and dress in a few minutes. Martin, old boy, come here a moment.”
Again his duty, the need for remonstrance, strove with his tenderness.
“Martin,” he said, gently, “that’s rather strong language to use to your sister, isn’t it? Don’t get in that sort of habit, dear fellow; never use words idly like that.”
At this all the genial instinctive pleasure faded out of Martin’s face and his eyes fell.
“Yes, father, I’m sorry,” he said, in a perfectly dull, conventional voice.
“I know it was only thoughtlessness, old boy,” said his father; “but try to think. There then. How’s the game going?—is Helen playing with the frightful precision we are getting accustomed to? Look there, she’s hit your ball from right across the lawn. Don’t be too merciless, Helen, with your poor brother.”
Helen smiled and made some laughing reply to her father. Then her eye caught sight of the book lying on the bank, her smile faded, and as she went after the ball she had hit she wondered what could be done. She guessed, though she had not heard the words, that Martin had already been rebuked for what he had said. She knew there had been one dreadful hour already that morning, and another was certain if her father saw the book. Mean time he was strolling down the lawn right in its direction, where it was lying radiant and blatant in its crimson cover on the vivid green of the grass. Martin also had seen what would happen, and as she passed him whispered to her:
“He’ll see it. O Lord!” with a drearily comic expression.