Still Olivia went on with her occupation, without paying the slightest attention to him. Suddenly the rejected suitor shovelled all the things he had taken out back into his pockets, and with a monkey-like spring placed himself right in front of her.
“I wish there was somebody about to tell you what a jolly fool you’re making of yourself,” he said, looking up at her rather viciously.
“You may go and fetch somebody to do so if you like,” said she, serenely.
“And leave you in peace for a little while, I suppose you mean?”
“Perhaps some such thought may have crossed my mind.”
Mr. Fred Williams had not a high opinion of himself, but experience had taught him that his “expectations” gave him an adventitious value; to find neither his modesty nor his money of any avail was a discovery which destroyed for once his habitual good humor, and showed a side of his character which he should by all means have kept concealed from a lady he wished to charm.
“Very well,” he snarled, while an ugly blush spread over his face, and his fingers twitched with anger; “very well. You may think it very smart to snub me, and high-spirited and all that. I’ve stood a good deal of it—a good deal more than I’d have stood from anybody else—because you’re handsome. I know I’m not handsome, or refined either; but I don’t pretend to be. And I’m a lot handsomer than the hatchet-faced parson, anyhow. And as for refinement, you can get a lot more for twenty-five thousand a year than for a couple of hundred, which is quite a decent screw for one of your preaching fellows. But now I’ve done with you, I tell you, I’ve done with you.”
“Isn’t that rather a singular expression, considering that I’ve never given you the slightest encouragement?” asked Olivia, coldly.
“Encouragement! I don’t expect encouragement; but I expect a girl like you to know a good thing when she sees it.”
“I am afraid we differ as to what constitutes a good thing.”