Hugh came down wiping his hot face with his handkerchief. He took in the scene at a glance,—the eager children, waiting for him before they began, Miss Bibby seated at the adjacent slab table where she had piled the empty hampers, hastily eating a poor meal from a plate before her.
“Fall to, chickens,” said Hugh, and the four children made a glad, mad dash for their seats and with glowing eyes “fell to.”
Hugh went to the grey slab table.
[p261]
“My dear Miss Bibby, am I always to be doing you an injury?” he said.
And at that instant there rolled away from Agnes Bibby’s soul all the heaviness that had oppressed it, and the sun shone out.
Of course, of course there was some mistake,—he had never meant to take credit for her work!
“Oh,” she gasped, “it was a mistake, of course. You—you sent them the wrong MS, that is all.” Why had no lightning flash of this possibility come to her before in her darkness?
Hugh looked at her in speechless admiration.
Then he spoke, and slowly. “I think,” he said, “you are without exception the most sensible woman I have ever met.”
And now there ran into Agnes Bibby’s face a flood of colour, quite as delicate and beautiful as that which sometimes stained the fresh young skins of Dora and Beatrice. She felt so guilty—she had thought—what had she not thought? She began to try to tell him she was not as sensible as he imagined, but he was so busy explaining to her how it all happened, and pressing the ten-guinea cheque upon her which he insisted her story had earned, that she simply was afforded no chance.