“My brother would say nothing if I were to turn all the drawing-room furniture out into the churchyard,” answered he, promptly. “You mustn’t judge his temper by my black looks. He and I are as different as heaven and—earth. All the ladies fall in love with him.”
“Then I shall not,” said Miss Denison, decidedly. “I like my loves all to myself.”
Mr. Brander considered her attentively, with a quizzical look.
“I should think you would,” he said, smiling. “I am afraid you will be badly off down here—if indeed you could be badly off for admirers anywhere. The nearest approach to an eligible swain in these parts is the gentleman who escorted you home.”
Olivia, who was nailing up a curtain while Mr. Brander kept steady the erection of a box and a chair on which she stood, put down her hammer to indulge in a hearty burst of laughter.
“Oh, I’m afraid it’s all over with the pretty little romance you have been building up for me,” she said, looking down with her bright eyes still twinkling with amusement. “I pushed him into a hedge.”
“At the first blush that does not look promising certainly,” said Mr. Brander with perfect gravity, “considering the rank of the parties. For if he had been the clod-hopper nature intended him for, and you the dairymaid he would have liked you to be, such a demonstration as that would have been the certain prelude to a wedding.”
“It wasn’t a very lady-like thing to do, I’m afraid,” said Olivia, blushing a very becoming crimson. “But really he was not the sort of person to be dealt with by means of modest little screams and flutterings. And—well, the truth is, I really was so furiously angry that I would have thrown him over the hedge if I’d been strong enough.”
“I wish you belonged to my parish,” said Mr. Brander, reflectively. “It is a great pity such nerve and muscle should be thrown away. Now, there’s an old villain who always nods through the first part of my sermon, and snores as soon as I grow a little eloquent—and—and I daren’t throw him into a hedge myself; my motives might be questioned. But if I could only get a fair and amiable parishioner to do it for me, no one could say a word.”
“You want to make me ashamed of myself,” said Olivia, giving a vicious blow to the nail she was driving in. “But you shan’t succeed. My father and my two brothers think that everything I do is right.”