Then as if the spot burned, or as if a natural instinct taught her that the kiss imprinted upon her cheek was not as cleanly as it should have been, or as one of the honest salutes of the aforesaid Joe Chegg, Dally Watlock lifted her neat white apron, and wiped the place again.
“How dare he kiss her?” said Leo Salis, frowning, as she laid the post letters beside her brother’s place at the breakfast-table, and then stood with the note in her hand. “I’ll punish him for this!”
She hastily tore open the note, which was written in a good, manly hand, but contained in ten lines four specimens of faulty spelling, and a “you was” which looked as big as a blot.
The note was brief and contained a pressing invitation to meet the writer in Red Cliff Wood that morning, as soon after breakfast as she could.
“I won’t go,” she said passionately. “I’ll punish him!”
Then, as if feeling that she would punish herself, the girl stood thinking, and then hastily crushed the note in her hand and walked to the window, to be apparently studying the pretty Warwickshire landscape as her brother and sister entered the room.
“Morning, Leo, dear,” said Mary Salis, the elder of the two; a fair English girl, grey-eyed, with high forehead and dark-brown, wavy hair, her type of countenance, allowing for feminine softness, being wonderfully like that of the robust, manly-looking clergyman who entered with his hand resting upon her shoulder.
“Morning, Mary,” said Leo quietly; and her handsome dark, almost Spanish, features seemed perfectly calm and inanimate as she returned her sister’s salute; and then, in a half weary way, rather distantly held up her cheek for her brother to kiss.
“Get out!” said the latter boisterously, as he caught the handsome girl by the shoulders, and tried to look in her eyes which avoided his. “No nonsense, Leo, my dear. No grumps. Give me a good, honest kiss. Lips—lips—lips.”
She raised her face in obedience to the emphatic demand, and then extricated herself from the two strong hands, to take her place at the table; while her sister, who seemed nervous and anxious, and kept glancing from one to the other, went to the head of the table, and began to make the tea.