“Oh, I’m so glad!” interrupted Olivia, with a deep-drawn breath of relief; “that is good of you, Mr. Mitchell. For it would have been—dreadful—dreadful!”
Ned was looking away over the cornfields, where his sharp eyes detected a figure he recognized, wandering about in an aimless manner.
“I think you’d better take a walk out into the meadows there,” he said, after a minute’s pause, turning again to the young lady, with a kindly look on his hard face. “It will do you good after all the excitement and botherment of this morning.”
Olivia blushed again.
“Thank you,” she said, with a proud turn of her head. “I don’t care to go out again this afternoon. The air is much too oppressive.”
“Oh, all right,” said Ned with a dry nod; “then I musn’t keep you out here talking in the ‘oppressive’ air, I suppose. Good-day, Miss Denison.”
“Good-bye,” she said, gently, holding out her hand, which he shook with a firm pressure.
Then he walked up the hill, talking to himself.
“These old-country lasses are fine creatures,” he meditated. “There’s Mrs. B., whom I didn’t care for, and Miss D. whom I did, and I’m blest if they haven’t both got too good a spirit to be married at all. Yet one wouldn’t care to see them old maids, either—nor yet men—nor yet angels. These high-spirited ladies, who can think and act for themselves, don’t seem to fit in somehow. One would feel they were kind of too good for one. Give me a nice, comfortable lass, whom you needn’t study any more than a potato. You know what to be at with one of them. By-the-bye, now I suppose I must take ship and see how my own potato is getting on.”
Nevertheless, from the top of the hill he looked down rather sentimentally in the direction of the old farm. As he did so, he caught sight of a girl’s tall figure in the meadows. He laughed maliciously.