Miss Biron, candlestick in hand, was examining the injuries done to her back door.
Bram opened his mouth to speak, but he stammered and uttered something unintelligible, taken aback as he was by the vast difference between the fancy picture he had been drawing of the young lady and the reality with which he was confronted.
For instead of the wan, white face, the streaming eyes, the anxious and weary look he had expected to see, he found himself face to face with a cheery little creature, brisk in movement, bright of eyes, who looked up with a start when he appeared before her, and said rather sharply—
“This is your doing, I suppose? And instead of being scolded for the mischief you have done you expect to be thanked and perhaps rewarded, no doubt?”
At first Bram could scarcely believe his ears.
“Ah’m sorry for t’ damage Ah’ve done, miss,” he said hurriedly. “And that’s what Ah’ve waited for to tell yer, nowt but that. But it’s not so bad as it looks. It’s nobbut t’ bolt sprung off and a scratch to the paint outside. If you can let me have a look into your tool-chest, Ah’ll set it reght at once. And for t’ paint, Ah’ll come up for that to-morrow neght.”
Miss Biron smiled graciously. The humble Bram had his sense of humor tickled by the airs she was giving herself now, as if she had forgotten altogether her helpless fright of only an hour before, and the relief with which she had hailed his disarming of her father.
“Well, that’s only fair, isn’t it?” said she with a bright smile, as she instantly acted upon his advice by disappearing into the house like a flash of lightning.
Bram heard the rattling of tools, and as it went on some time without apparent result, he stepped inside the door to see if he could be of any assistance.
Claire had thrown open the door of a cupboard to the left of the wide hearth, and was standing on a Windsor chair turning over the contents of a couple of biscuit tins on the top shelf. Bram, slow step by slow step, came nearer and nearer, fascinated by every rapid movement of this, the first feminine creature who had ever aroused his interest. How small her feet were! Bram looked at them, and then turned away his head, as if he had been guilty of something sacrilegious. And the movement of her arm as she turned over the odds and ends in the boxes, the bend of her dark head as she looked down, filled him afresh with that strange new sense of wonder and delight with which she had inspired him on his first sight of her at the works. Against the light of the candle, which she had placed on the shelf, he saw her profile in a new aspect, in which it looked prettier, more childlike than ever.