He sprang to his feet and came toward her, quickly enough, in spite of his limp.
“I’m waiting to see what will happen,” he explained. “I’ve done things to that furnace!”
He stood there, smiling up at her, and she felt obliged to smile back at him, but it was not easy.
“If he’d rather stay in the cellar,” she thought, “there’s no reason why he shouldn’t—absolutely no reason. I’m sure—”
“Look here!” said Mr. Smith, suddenly. “Couldn’t we go into the city to dinner some evening?”
A great indignation came over Bess, and a sort of alarm. Young Smith was not smiling now; he seemed earnest enough—too earnest. Nobody had ever looked at her like that before. He had preferred to hide in the cellar, rather than talk to her upstairs; and now, when she had come, merely out of humanity, to see if he were dead or alive, he misunderstood her. He thought she was one of those girls who would jump at any invitation, however casual. He thought she was running after him.
“Thank you,” she said, frigidly; “but I don’t care for things like that.”
Then she turned and went up the stairs. She went into the kitchen and made a cup of cocoa for her father to drink before he went to bed.[Pg 499]
“I hope I’ve made him see!” she thought.
Suddenly she was overwhelmed by a recollection of Mr. Smith’s face, after she had spoken. She remembered him standing there at the foot of the cellar stairs, with a smudge on his cheek, and such a contrite, miserable look in his blue eyes.