"You—don't you—don't you go out much in the evening?" he said, feeling (to his own surprise) considerably at a loss what to say.
"Go out much in the evening? No, indeed; where should I go to?" Rhoda actually gave a little laugh as she answered him.
"Oh, I thought my mother mentioned that you were a good deal at the Bodkins."
"Yes; I go to see Miss Minnie sometimes. They are all very good to me."
"And my mother says, too, that you are growing quite a blue-stocking! You have lessons in French, and music, and I don't know what besides."
"Father can afford to have me taught now, and so I have begun to learn a few of the things that girls are taught when they are little children, if they happen to be the children of gentlefolks," answered Rhoda, with considerable spirit.
"I'm sure there is no reason why you should not learn them."
"I hope not. But, of course, I am clumsy, and shall never succeed so well as if I had begun earlier. I am getting very old, you know!"
"Oh, very old, indeed! Your birthday, I remember, falls——" he checked himself with a sudden recollection of the last birthday he had spent with Rhoda, and of the bunch of late roses he had been at the pains to procure for her on that occasion from the gardener at Pudcombe Hall. And, on the whole, he felt positively relieved when Slater came to announce, with her chronic air of resentful gentility, that "Miss Maxfield's young woman was waiting for her in the hall."
"And are you off too, mother?" he asked.