Nell blushed, and turned her uncle’s attention to his tea, while Clifford, in some surprise, enjoyed the knowledge that he had cut Jordan out without even a struggle.
Nell herself explained this presently, when her uncle had been called away by press of business in the bar, and the two young people were left sitting together, looking through the open glass door into the garden behind the inn.
“I’m afraid you will think I didn’t treat your friend very well, after setting him to work to pitch that shed for us,” she said, with a pretty blush in her cheeks, as she looked down at the table-cloth, and thus enabled Clifford to see that her long, curled, golden-brown eyelashes were the prettiest he had ever seen.
“I’m afraid he will think so,” said Clifford, with affected solemnity. “I think myself that, after such heavy work as that, he did deserve a cup of tea.”
Nell looked up in some distress, her blue eyes brighter with excitement, and her voice quite tremulous in its earnestness.
“Ah, you don’t know!” she said, quickly. “I am not ungrateful, but I am in a very difficult position, and I have to be careful how I treat people. Don’t you know yourself that a great many men, gentlemen too—or they call themselves so—think they have a right to treat a girl who lives at an inn differently from other girls? Surely you must know that?”
Clifford grew red, conscious that the girl had penetrated a weak spot in Willie’s social armor.
“Well, but—”
“Oh, you needn’t say ‘but,’” interrupted Nell. “You know it is true. Now I don’t want to say anything against your friend; he is very nice, and very good-natured; but—”
“You have to keep him in order,” said Clifford.