"Not one bit! Not one speck!" cried Clytie. "Only——"
"Well, there are others," said Bond. "I'm prostrate already, as you know. And Whyland, only a few mornings back, got a good jar that will help finish him, I'm thinking."
"Did he? And there's Aunt Eudoxia too. If you could have seen how discouraged she was after she came home from that first meeting with him, when he took the wind out of her training-school——"
"But he isn't going to jar you? He isn't going to cause you to totter?"
"Not a jar! Not a tot! You'll see whether——"
"Your object, then, is to show how much stronger you are than I am?"
Clytie suddenly paused in her impetuous rush. "Adrian," she breathed, with plaintive contrition, "I wish you wouldn't say such things—no, nor even think them."
Her fierce alertness fled. She leaned a little toward him, droopingly, a poor, feeble, timid child in need of some strong man to shield her from the rough world.
The other carriage reached home first. Medora alighted gaily on the horse-block. Abner helped her down with an earnest endeavour not to seem too attentive.
"Come," she said; "let's see how those pies have turned out—Cordelia is so absent-minded."