“Hello! Who’s there? Oh! Dolloway—Mr. Dolloway, I mean—what you doin’ scarin’ folks that way?”
“Hearin’ my neighbors’ honest opinion of me.”
There was an awkward silence, which Mrs. Beckwith broke by saying gently: “You could not have heard anything inimical to you, Mr. Dolloway, though you must have learned our perplexity. Please come in, and share the feast you have so generously provided us. But, what is far more my desire, please explain frankly in what we have hurt your feelings or seemed ungrateful for all your neighborliness. Will you not?”
The old servant—for such he considered himself still, though he was treated quite as an equal by nearly all who knew him—rarely refused a request of Mrs. Beckwith. He had come intending to sit an hour in that cheery “peace-room,” and though he had been momentarily angered by hearing himself the subject of discussion, he now swallowed his pique and entered.
Robert jumped down from the table and ran with a dish of the fragrant fruit to the visitor, but was waved grimly away. “No, I don’t give things an’ then come an’ eat ’em up.” Nor could any persuasions prevail upon him to change his mind.
In almost any other household the situation would have been highly uncomfortable; for, as Belle fancied, Mr. Dolloway sat jealously watching every morsel vanish, and looking as if he had conferred an everlasting obligation upon them all; but they were too really sincere in their liking for the odd old man and too busily occupied with their own interests to pay really much attention to this.
Suddenly the guest demanded, “Goin’ parcellin’ to-morrow, young man?”
“Yes, sir; I expect to do so.”
“H’m-m! Like the wagon, I s’pose?”
“I do like it very much. It is perfect for my business, so light and yet so strong; and the canvas cover makes such a good shelter from rain in case of these sudden showers.”