"Well," said Abner slowly, "I don't know but that I might find it interesting." This, Giles understood, was his rustic manner of accepting.
IX
Abner spent Christmas at the Giles farm, as Stephen had understood him to promise; and Medora, as her brother had engaged, "went along" too, and "ran the whole thing" from start to finish. Abner, with a secret interest compounded half of attraction, half of repulsion, promised himself a careful study of this "new type"—a type so bizarre, so artificial, and in all probability so thoroughly reprehensible.
Medora made up the rest of the party to suit herself. She had heard of Adrian Bond's struggles toward the indigenous, the simplified, and she was willing enough to give him a chance to see the cows in their winter quarters. Clytie Summers had begged very prettily for her glimpse too of the country at this time of year. "It's rather soon, I know, for that spring barn-yard; but I should so enjoy the ennui of some village Main Street in the early winter."
"Come along, then," said Medora. "We'll do part of our Christmas shopping there."
Giles accepted these two new recruits gladly. "Good thing for both of them," he declared to Joyce. "They'll make more progress on our farm in a week than they could in six months of studio teas."
This remark admitted of but one interpretation.
"Why!" said Abner; "do you want her to marry him?"—him, a fellow so slight, frivolous, invertebrate!
"Oh, he's a very decent little chap," returned Giles. "He'll be kind to her—he'll see she's taken good care of."
"But do you want him to marry her?"—her, so bold, so improper, so prone to seek entertainment in the woes of others!