"I won't show her up," said Dick to his neatest boots, while he scraped them at his mother's door, "but I should like to know who that bumptious-looking chap is, and what the h----ll she could have to say to him in the Square gardens all the same."
Mr. Stanmore's language at the luncheon-table, it is needless to say, was far less emphatic than that which relieved his feelings in soliloquy; nor was he to-day quite so talkative as usual. His mother thought him silent (he always called her "mother," and, to do her justice, she could not have loved her own son better, nor scolded him oftener, had she possessed one); Miss Bruce voted him stupid and sulky. She told him so.
"A merrythought, if you please, and no bread-sauce," said the young lady, in her calm, imperious manner. "Don't forget I hate bread-sauce, if you mean to come here often to luncheon; and do say something. Aunt Agatha can't, no more can I. Recollect we've got a heavy afternoon before us."
Aunt Agatha always contradicted. "Not heavier than any other breakfast, Maud," said she severely. "You didn't think that tea at the Tower heavy last week, nor the ghosts in the mess-room of the Blues. Lady Goldthred's an old friend of mine, and it was very kind of her to ask us. Besides, Dick's coming down in the barouche."
Maud's face brightened, and be sure, Dick saw it brighten.
"That accounts for it," said she, with the rare smile in her eyes; "and he thinks we sha'n't let him smoke, so he sulks beforehand, grim, grave, and silent as a ghost. Mr. Stanmore, cheer up. You may smoke the whole way down. I'll give you leave."
"Nonsense, my dear," observed Aunt Agatha sternly. "He don't want to do anything of the kind. What have you been about, Maud, all the morning? I looked for you everywhere to help me with the visiting-list."
"Puckers and I took a 'constitutional,'" answered Miss Bruce unblushingly. "We wanted to do some shopping." But her dark eyes stole towards Dick, and, although his never met them, she felt satisfied he had witnessed her interview with Tom Ryfe in the Square gardens.
"I saw you both coming in, Miss Bruce," said Dick, breaking the awkward pause which succeeded Maud's mis-statement. "I think Puckers wears twice as smart a bonnet as yours. I hope you are not offended."
Again that smile from the dark eyes. Dick felt, and perhaps she meant him to feel, that he had lost nothing in her good opinion by ignoring even to herself that which she wished to keep unknown.