“Oh, he’s our head engineer. He’s a regular first-rate fellow! He can do anything;” my hero-worship and my pride in my chief all coming into play. Besides, if I was not clever and book-learned myself, it was something to belong to some one who was.
“How is it that he speaks Italian?” asked Phillis.
“He had to make a railway through Piedmont, which is in Italy, I believe; and he had to talk to all the workmen in Italian; and I have heard him say that for nearly two years he had only Italian books to read in the queer outlandish places he was in.”
“Oh, dear!” said Phillis; “I wish—” and then she stopped. I was not quite sure whether to say the next thing that came into my mind; but I said it.
“Could I ask him anything about your book, or your difficulties?”
She was silent for a minute or so, and then she made reply,—
“No! I think not. Thank you very much, though. I can generally puzzle a thing out in time. And then, perhaps, I remember it better than if some one had helped me. I’ll put it away now, and you must move off, for I’ve got to make the paste for the pies; we always have a cold dinner on Sabbaths.”
“But I may stay and help you, mayn’t I?”
“Oh, yes; not that you can help at all, but I like to have you with me.” I was both flattered and annoyed at this straightforward avowal. I was pleased that she liked me; but I was young coxcomb enough to have wished to play the lover, and I was quite wise enough to perceive that if she had any idea of the kind in her head she would never have spoken out so frankly. I comforted myself immediately, however, by finding out that the grapes were sour. A great tall girl in a pinafore, half a head taller than I was, reading books that I had never heard of, and talking about them too, as of far more interest than any mere personal subjects; that was the last day on which I ever thought of my dear cousin Phillis as the possible mistress of my heart and life. But we were all the greater friends for this idea being utterly put away and buried out of sight.
Late in the evening the minister came home from Hornby. He had been calling on the different members of his flock; and unsatisfactory work it had proved to him, it seemed from the fragments that dropped out of his thoughts into his talk.