"Oh, Myrrh!" remonstrated Winnie, who thought that his repentance was really carrying him beyond all reasonable bounds.
Nessa looked at him compassionately. She felt as if she loved Murtagh very much just then in spite of all his faults.
"Poor Murtagh!" she said. "Perhaps it will not always be so difficult."
Murtagh looked at her with a sad, wistful expression, then he dropped back again into the dark corner beside her chair.
No one spoke for a minute or two. Then Winnie returned to the subject that seemed to have disturbed her. "But you don't want Murtagh to beg his pardon?" she said. "Because you know he couldn't really."
"Yes, I can," came in a low, resolute voice from Murtagh's corner.
"Can you really?" asked Nessa. To tell the truth she would not have liked to do it herself.
Bobbo and Rosie looked with eager curiosity towards Murtagh. But Winnie burst out again: "Myrrh, you don't know what you're saying. That old scurmudgeon who has always worried us from the very first day we came here!"
No words can convey the opprobrium that Winnie contrived to throw into her pronunciation of curmudgeon; the one letter she added to it expressed more than a whole volume of epithets. After a moment's silence he said steadily, "Yes, I am almost sure I can."
"If you can," said Nessa, "it's the very best thing you could do. Because," she continued, "it is not only for you; it is for your friend Pat. Uncle Blair has told me such dreadful things of the people about here. And perhaps it is very foolish of me, but Pat is a big boy, and if he does not forgive Mr. Plunkett, he might really try to be revenged, and then if—if anything dreadful happened, it would be your fault, too."