“Oh, how interesting! How beautiful!” she cried, her red lips parted, and showing the little regular white teeth within. “I never thought that grapes would grow like this. Please show me more.”
He climbed and sprawled awkwardly on to the great plank that reached from tie to tie, seating himself astride with the consequence that his trousers were dragged half way up his long, thin legs, revealing his clumsily-made garden shoes. In his eagerness to show his visitor the growing of his vines he heeded it not; but after snapping off a luxuriant shoot, he was about to tie the residue to a stout wire, when a cry of fear from Helen arrested him.
“Oh, Mr Rosebury, pray, pray get down!” she cried. “It is not safe. I’m sure you’ll fall!”
“It is quite safe,” he said, mildly; and he looked down with a bland smile at the anxious face below him.
“Oh, no,” she cried; “it cannot be.”
“I have tested it so many times,” he said. “Pray do not be alarmed.”
“But I am alarmed,” she cried, looking up at him with an agitated air that made him hasten to descend, going through a series of evolutions that did not tend to set off his ungainly figure to advantage, and ended in landing him at her feet minus the bottom button of his vest.
“Thank you,” she cried. “I am afraid I am very timid, but I could not bear to see you there.”
“Then I must leave my vines for the present,” he said, smiling.
“Oh, if you please,” she cried; and then, as they left the vinery, she relapsed into so staid and dignified a mood, that the Reverend Arthur felt troubled and as if he had been guilty of some grave want of courtesy to his sister’s guest, a state of inquietude that was ended by the coming of Miss Rosebury and Grey.