With the audacious coquetry of a cold woman, she pressed his arm with her hand, and bending forward looked into his face with her great gazelle-like eyes, which, by a turn of her head, she could make divinely alluring while ordering the details of a custard pudding. But Vernon was not now to be allured. He withdrew his arm boldly under the pretence that it required two hands to hold the heavy umbrella at the proper angle.
“Miss Denison has gone home,” said he. “And I’m going home: thank you.”
“What, without an umbrella? Come as far as the house, and I’ll give you one. It’s sure to rain before you can get back.”
“Miss Denison has got mine. I can go to the farm to fetch it.”
“Well, perhaps you won’t mind seeing me as far as the door first. I can’t hold that great thing and keep my dress up too. I won’t insist on your coming in; that will do some other time. I had something to say—to ask you about my Katie; but never mind now. I see you are thinking of something else.”
“Katie!” exclaimed Vernon. “What about Katie?”
“Oh, she doesn’t seem very well to-day, and I thought perhaps—”
“You thought what? Is there anything I can do?”
“There might have been. But I can’t ask favors of you in such a mood as you are in to-night. We are losing you day by day. You will soon have no place in your heart even for Katie.”
“I think you misjudge me, Evelyn. A child may forget her friends when they are absent. But at least she does not speak ill of them.”