The maid smiled grimly. She understood this as an overture for peace, knowing her young mistress was never so thoughtful and conciliatory as just after being most unreasonable and peremptory. She rightly conjectured that the girl was already ashamed of her sharpness, and wished to make amends in some way. Mr. Dalton's slower comprehension of womankind was bewildered by these rapid changes. Having inwardly decided, in spite of Ellen's favorable testimony, that here was a young lady who had been allowed her own way more than was good for her, he was left stranded on the shore of his own conjectures by her present tone. He had mentally dubbed her a sort of princess, determined to have her say in everything; now she seemed a child eager to be led by any one. But Ellen was answering with fine sarcasm.
"I might walk faster, too, if I hadn't got 'most paralyzed on them wooden chairs. But never mind! Keep right on—I guess I can manage to get there, if I try hard."
Fortunately for her legs and temper, they stopped presently before a rather ornate cottage, with several peaks and a turret, which was set down in the midst of a square lawn that looked unnaturally green to Joyce in comparison with the bareness all about it. Grass, except in long scraggy tufts here and there, or in sparse blades in some odd fence corner, was not prevalent at the Works. Joyce liked all that was trim and beautiful, but just now this house and lawn, so new and snug and smiling, jarred upon her like a discordant note. What business had he to live where fresh paint and large windows and broad verandas should mock at the poverty and squalor of all the other houses? She felt it almost as a personal insult.
Mr. Dalton, to whom a neat home of his own was still a novelty, was a trifle hurt by her lack of enthusiasm. He had really looked for a girlish "Oh, how pretty!" and somewhat resented Miss Lavillotte's quiet way of saying,
"I see you have been able to make yourself comfortable, even in this forbidding spot, Mr. Dalton."
But he answered cheerfully,
"Oh, yes, yes. It seems good to have a home after so many years of fifth-rate boarding houses. And the best of it is, my good aunt, who has had a hard time breasting the world, enjoys it even more than I."
The girl did not speak at once. She was distinctly ashamed of herself. Then she broke out quickly:
"I see. It was most good of you. I am hasty as an ill-tempered child in my judgments! Mr. Dalton"—she stopped before the neat iron gate in the low fence, which he was holding open for her to pass through, and barring the way, said rapidly, "as we will have to work together in all that is done here, I may as well say at once—I am often quick, irascible, unkind. I want things to move at once, and when they don't it makes me cross. It isn't because I—I have money, though—you mustn't think it. I am not such a cad! It's just my nature, that's all. I can't help it, and it cuts me up when I come to my senses more than it possibly can anybody else. There! Shall we be friends and co-workers, or not?"
She held out her small gloved hand, and as he warmly clasped it, a flush that was so strange to his bronzed cheek it fairly colored for its own temerity, made his face foolishly warm. He laughed out like a boy.