"I should think not," he burst out. "That would be a fine thing! If you looked up to a fellow like me, I think it would almost cure me of looking up to you; and what I want is to look up to you every day and all day long: only I can do that whether you let me or not."
"But I don't choose to have a—a—friend to whom I can't look up."
"Then I shall never be even a friend," he returned sadly. "But I would have tried hard to be less unworthy of you."
At this precise moment, Marion caught sight of a pair of great round blue eyes, wide open under a shock of red hair, about three feet from the floor, staring as if they had not winked for the last ten minutes. The child looked so comical, that Marion, reading perhaps in her looks the reflex of her own position, could not help laughing. Roger started up in dismay, but, beholding the apparition, laughed also.
"Please, grannie," said the urchin, "mother's took bad, and want's ye."
"Run and tell your mother I shall be with her directly," answered Marion; and the child departed.
"You told me I might come again," pleaded Roger.
"Better not. I didn't know what it would mean to you when I said it."
"Let it mean what you meant by it, only let me come."
"But I see now it can't mean that. No: I will write to you. At all events, you must go now, for I can't stop with you when Mrs. Foote"—