“Like it?” he said, finishing the sentence for her. “To be sure she would, my pet. What a one I am to deliver a message. It was her who asked the Rector to bid you come; and, as I thought you wouldn’t mind, I just said that you would go.”
“Oh, uncle, but I—I dare not,” cried Sage, excitedly.
“Stuff! Tchah! Nonsense, my dear. What’s to be afraid of! They’re gentlepeople, I s’pose, but they’re only human beings after all, and you’ve nothing to be ashamed of, I’m sure. I told parson you’d go on this afternoon, as there was no school, and he said I was not to be uneasy, for some one should see you home.”
Sage’s colour came and went as she sat there trembling, and painfully conscious.
Some one should see her home—some one should see her home. The words kept repeating themselves in her ears till she felt giddy.
What did it all mean? Why did her uncle speak to her in this gentle way? What more had passed between him and the Rector?
She gazed in his face at this, and a score more such questions repeated themselves, while the answers seemed far away.
“Go up to the rectory to-day, uncle?” she faltered at last. “I dare not go.”
“But I wish you to go,” he said, decidedly, and Sage’s heart gave one great joyful throb.
Had it been left to her she would have stayed away, but her uncle wished her to go—he literally bade her go.