I had not noticed this.
“How stupid of him!” I exclaimed.
He had marched off so fast that I had to run down the lane after him before he heard me call “Mr. Reade!” We laughed a little at the embarrassment he would have felt if he had produced a ball of wool and curtain-hooks as the result of his morning’s shopping, and I if I had gravely presented Mrs. Rayner with a bag of marbles. And then, remorseful and blushing, I said hurriedly—
“I did keep one of the roses, Mr. Reade—the one with the note on it;” and then I ran back to Haidee, without looking up. Whether he was engaged or not, I could not be ungracious about those lovely flowers.
Then Haidee and I went home to dinner. I had met Mr. Reade quite by accident, and I had done nothing wrong, nothing but what civility demanded, in exchanging a few words with him; but I was glad Haidee was not one of those foolish prattling little girls who insist upon chattering at meal-times about all the small events of the morning’s walk.
CHAPTER IX.
Mr. Reade’s cruel and prejudiced accusations against Mr. Rayner had not in the least shaken my faith in the kindness and goodness of the master of the Alders; but I felt anxious to prove to myself that the charges he brought against him were groundless. Mr. Reade’s suggestion that he let his family sleep in the damp house while he passed his nights elsewhere, for instance, was absurd in the extreme. Where else could he sleep without any one’s knowing anything about it? I often heard his voice and step about the house until quite late; he was always one of the first in the dining-room to our eight-o’clock breakfast, and even on the wettest mornings he never looked as if he had been out in the rain.
It often seems to me that, when I have been puzzling myself fruitlessly for a long time over any matter, I find out quite simply by accident what I want to know. Thus, only the day after my talk with Mr. Reade in the shop, I was nursing Haidee, who did not feel inclined to play after lesson-time, when she said—
“Do you ever have horrid dreams, Miss Christie, that frighten you, and then come true?”
“No, darling; dreams are only fancies, you know, and never come true, except just by accident.”