“Well, you can ask him,” she said, abruptly; “and if he doesn’t object, you can go to see my mother, when she gets home, and ask her. And here comes Mr. Matlack. I think he has been calling you. Now don’t say another word, unless it is about fish.”
But Matlack did not come; he stopped and called, and Martin went to him.
Margery walked languidly towards the woods and sat down on the projecting root of a large tree. Then leaning back against the trunk, she sighed.
“It is a perfectly dreadful thing to be a girl,” she said; “but I am glad I did not speak to him as I did to Mr. Raybold. I believe he would have jumped into the lake.”
CHAPTER XXI
THE INDIVIDUALITY OF PETER SADLER
“Martin,” said Matlack, sharply, before the young man had reached him, “it seems to me that you think that you have been engaged here as lady’s-maid, but there’s other things to do besides teaching young women about trees and fishes. If you think,” continued Matlack, when the two had reached the woodland kitchen, “that your bein’ a hermit is goin’ to let you throw all the work on me, you’re mistaken. There’s a lot of potatoes that’s got to be peeled for dinner.”
Without a word Martin sat down on the ground with a pan of potatoes in front of him and began to work. Had he been a proud crusader setting forth to fight the Saracens his blood could not have coursed with greater warmth and force, his soul could not have more truly spurned the earth and all the common things upon it. What he had said to Margery had made him feel ennobled. If Raybold had that instant appeared before him with some jeering insult, Martin would have pardoned him with lofty scorn; and yet he peeled potatoes, and did it well. But his thoughts were not upon his work; they were upon the future which, if he proved himself to be the man he thought himself to be, might open before him. When he had finished the potatoes he put the pan upon a table and stood near by, deep in thought.