He decided that she did not like the slighting reference to that pen and strove to rectify his mistake. “You know, however good an instrument it is, I don’t like to see it in a woman’s hand,” he went on, “it’s an edged weapon and cuts into even the hard hand that holds it; your little hand would bleed if you grasped it perpetually. I better like to think of it smoothing these little heads.”
He looked—he knew not why himself—half sadly at the eager children.
“Isn’t he an anachronism?” laughed Kate, “I often tell him the reason he has not married is he has never been able to find [p242] any one sufficiently Early Victorian for him. Imagine preaching a doctrine of ‘Thou shalt not write’ to women to-day! Every woman her own authoress is the accepted thing.”
“Ah well,” said Hugh, “I know a better thing.” But though Kate pressed him he might not tell to these two spinsters that “Every woman a mother” was in his thoughts.
“I will say good-night,” said Miss Bibby, “come children—at once, if you please.” She shook hands with Kate and this time only bowed to Hugh.
“Did you give her her present?” asked Kate when the gate closed and the grey figure and the little running ones were merged in the grey of the tender dusk.
“No,” said Hugh, “I’ll have to find a better chance; I evidently put my foot in it, didn’t I?” He pondered over the keen eye-glance that had met his once or twice.
“I tell you what it is, Kate,” he said, when, his cigar finished, they went into the house, “that girl will never really forgive me for the interview, however much she may think she does.”
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