“I’m afraid it must have given you a great deal of trouble. One of them was nearly full of water, I know.”
“Why, yes, it wasn’t too easy to get them up, because the bank slopes, and the earth is so slimy just here. But I’m very glad to have been able to do you the little service.”
“It wasn’t a little service; it was a great one,” said Nell, with a look which Clifford felt to be intoxicating.
At that moment he heard a sound like a short, mocking laugh; and turning, with a sudden flush, to look at the river, he saw the fisherman, with a face full of scornful amusement, punting away slowly up stream toward Fleet Castle. Clifford, though he felt a little uneasy, was glad the man had gone.
“Your friends have gone back to Stroan,” said Nell, who had blushed a little, on her side, when she heard the fisherman’s contemptuous laugh.
“Is that a hint for me to follow their example?”
“Oh, no, indeed. My uncle said, when I told him what you were doing for us, that I was to ask you to come in and have a cup of tea with us—if you would condescend to accept an invitation from an innkeeper and his niece?”
Nell smiled a little as she added these words; and the manner in which she uttered them showed so keen a perception of social distinctions that Clifford was confirmed in his belief that the girl was ridiculously out of her proper element in this wayside inn.
He followed her into a tiny sitting-room at the back of the inn, where they were joined by her uncle, a burly, jovial man with a round, red, honest face, who was evidently very fond of his niece, although every word each uttered seemed to emphasize the strange difference in manners and speech which existed between them.
“Proud to know you, sir,” said George Claris, when Clifford held out his hand. “Proud to know anybody my Nell thinks worth knowing. She’s mighty particular, is Nell. Lor’, what wouldn’t your friend, Mr. Jordan there, have given for an invite to tea in here like this! Eh, Nell?”