This was a flightiness which Little Ann did not encourage.
“Lady Joan—that's her daughter—is very grand and haughty. She's a great beauty. You'll look at her, but perhaps she won't look at you. But it's not her I'm troubled about. I'm thinking of Captain Palliser and men like him.”
“Who's he?”
“He's one of those smooth, clever ones that's always getting up some company or other and selling the stock. He'll want you to know his friends and he'll try to lead you his way.”
As Tembarom held to his bit of her dress, his eyes were adoring ones, which was really not to be wondered at. She WAS adorable as her soft, kind, wonderfully maternal girl face tried to control itself so that it should express only just enough to help and nothing to disturb.
“I don't want him to spoil you. I don't want anything to make you—different. I couldn't bear it.”
He pulled the bit of dress pleadingly.
“Why, Little Ann?” he implored quite low.
“Because,” she said, feeling that perhaps she was rash—“because if you were different, you wouldn't be T. Tembarom; and it was T. Tembarom that—that was T. Tembarom,” she finished hastily.
He bent his head down to the bit of tweed and kissed it.