“You!” he cried.
“Oh, I did not expect—I did not think”—she stammered. He had never seen Helen Carruth disconcerted. But she blushed like a schoolgirl when she gave him, saxifrage and all, her ungloved hand.
[XI.]
“Mother sent me!—I came down for her and father!” began Helen Carruth abruptly. Then she thought how that sounded—as if she need be supposed to apologize for or explain the circumstance that she happened to find one of her father’s old students sunning himself upon a given portion of the New England coast; and she blushed again. When she saw the sudden, upward motion of Bayard’s heavy eyelids, she could have set her pretty teeth through her tongue, for vexation at her little faux pas. From sheer embarrassment, she laughed it off.
“I haven’t heard anybody laugh like that since I came to Windover,” said Bayard, drawing a long breath. “Do give me an encore!”
“Now, then, you are laughing at me!”
“Upon the word of a poor heretic parson—no. You can’t think how it sounds. It sinks in—like the sun.”
“But I don’t feel like laughing any more. I’ve got all over it. I’m afraid I can’t oblige you.”