"Certainly not."
"I'm—" She meditated.... "I'm glad of that.... I never was diffident a moment in my life."
"You never had need to be," said Hugh very quietly.
"They go together, don't they, diffidence and modesty?"
"Not as often as diffidence and conceitedness."
"Why, Mr. Hugh!"
"One thing that makes me so silent is my conceit."
"Oh, you! you're not conceited at all! You're modest! You little know how great you are! You're a wonder!" Her tone was candor itself till maiden craft added, while she tinkled her softest and keenest: "You're a poet!"
With a gay wave, which dismissed him so easily that she resented his going, she turned, stepped warily into the cramped room, and stood transfixed with remorse for her tardiness and appalled and heart-wrung. The foot of the berth was by the door. There old Joy stood silently weeping. At its head knelt her mother in prayer and on it lay her playmate brother peacefully gasping out his life. A flash of retrospection told her he must have had the malady long before he had confessed it and that something—something earlier than her singing—yes, and later—not twins nor Gilmores nor river—oh, something, what was it?—had kept her—these two long, long days—blind.
"Ah, you! you!" she dumbly cried, all at once aflame with the Hayle gift for invective. "You stone image! 'To help you,' indeed! You! As if you—as if I—I won't, you born tyrant! 'Help you'—against my own kin! I will not—ever again. We're quits for good and all."