"He's handsome," Fanny now admitted. "But he's a little too showy. I've seen men like him at races, but they were not the men who were introduced to me. I don't think they knew anybody I knew—that sort of man, don't you know? And his English accent isn't quite English, and I don't like his little flat whiskers, and his hands irritate me. Besides, he said he had been in the navy, and now he admits that he never was. That's enough."
"My dear Fanny," Cordelia answered, on such occasions, "there was a misunderstanding about that, you know. He was in the navy, since he was an officer of Marines, but of course he wasn't expected to know—"
"The Marines!" exclaimed Fanny, contemptuously. "It's only a way of getting out of it, I'm sure!"
Thereupon the three Miss Miners told her that she was very unjust and prejudiced, as they retired together to praise Mr. Brinsley, out of hearing of their young cousin's tart comment. Miss Cordelia had made it all right by giving the man an opportunity of justifying himself after he had privately explained to her that the Marines were an integral part of the navy, but that they were not called upon to know anything about navigation,—a fact which must account for his ignorance.
He had very firm friends, to say the least of it, in the three spinsters, who might have been said to worship the ground on which he walked, and who thought it a sin and a shame that Fanny should treat him as she did. As for young Lawrence, he looked on, with his observant artist's eyes, and never mentioned Brinsley, except to Fanny herself. For he was not at all lacking in tact, however deficient he might be in the manly accomplishments.
"Do you know," Fanny began, one day when they were walking in the woods, "I don't half mind you're being such a bad hand at things. It's funny. I thought I should, at first—but I don't."
"I'm awfully glad," answered Lawrence, not finding anything else to say to express his gratitude.
"Oh, you may well be!" laughed Fanny. "I don't forgive everybody for being a duffer. And that's what you are, you know. You don't mind my saying so?"
"Oh no, not at all." The tone in which he spoke did not express much conviction, however.
"I believe you do," said Fanny, thoughtfully.