The woman did not press Laura further; she whispered something behind her hand to Peter, then searching in her basket found a large, red apple, which she held out with an encouraging nod and smile.
"Here, my dear. Here's something for you. Don't cry any more, don't now. It'll be all right."
Laura, who was well aware that she had not shed a tear since the couple entered the coach, coloured deeply, and made a movement, half shy, half unwilling, to put her hands behind her.
"Oh no, thank you," she said in extreme embarrassment, not wishing to hurt the giver's feelings. "Mother doesn't care for us to take things from strangers."
"Bless her soul!" cried the stout woman in amaze. "It's only an apple! Now, my dear, just you take it, and make your mind easy. Your ma wouldn't have nothin' against it to-day, I'm sure o' that—goin' away so far and all so alone like this.—It's sweet and juicy."
"It's Melb'm you'll be boun' for I dessay?" said the yellow-haired Peter so suddenly that Laura started.
She confirmed this, and let her solemn eyes rest on him wondering why he was so red and fidgety and uncomfortable. The woman said: "Tch, tch, tch!" at the length of the journey Laura was undertaking, and Peter, growing still redder, volunteered another remark.
"I was nigh to bein' in Melb'm once meself," he said.
"Aye, and he can't never forget it, the silly loon," threw in the woman, but so good-naturedly that it was impossible, Laura felt, for Peter to take offence.
She gazed at the pair, speculating upon the relation they stood in to each other. She had obediently put out her hand for the apple, and now sat holding it, without attempting to eat it. It had not been Mother's precepts alone that had weighed with her in declining it; she was mortified at the idea of being bribed, as it were, to be good, just as though she were Pin or one of the little boys. It was a punishment on her for having been so babyish as to cry; had she not been caught in the act, the woman would never have ventured to be so familiar.—The very largeness and rosiness of the fruit made it hateful to her, and she turned over in her mind how she could get rid of it.