'A happy Christmas to you, Mr. Angus,' she said, holding out her hand.
It was then that Rob lifted his hat, and overcame his upbringing. His unaccustomed fingers insisted on lifting it in such a cautious way that, in a court of law, it could have been argued that he was only planting it more firmly on his head. He did not do it well, but he did it. Some men would have succumbed altogether on realising so sharply that it is not women who are terrible, but a woman. Here is a clear case in which the part is greater than the whole.
Rob would have liked to wish Miss Abinger a happy Christmas too, but the words would not form, and had she chosen she could have left him looking very foolish. But Mary had blushed slightly when she caught sight of Rob standing helplessly in the middle of the road, and this meant that she understood what he was doing there. A girl can overlook a great deal in a man who admires her. She feels happier. It increases her self-respect. So Miss Abinger told him that, if the frost held, the snow would soon harden, but if a thaw came it would melt; and then Rob tore out of himself the words that tended to slip back as they reached his tongue.
'I don't know how I could have done it,' he said feebly, beginning at the end of what he had meant to say. There he stuck again.
Mary knew what he spoke of, and her pale face coloured. She shrank from talking of The Scorn of Scorns.
'Please don't let that trouble you,' she said, with an effort. 'I was really only a schoolgirl when I wrote it, and Miss Meredith got it printed recently as a birthday surprise for me. I assure you I would never have thought of publishing it myself for—for people to read. Schoolgirls, you know, Mr. Angus, are full of such silly sentiment.'
A breeze of indignation shook 'No, no!' out of Rob, but Mary did not heed.
'I know better now,' she said; 'indeed, not even you, the hardest of my critics, sees more clearly than I the—the childishness of the book.'
Miss Abinger's voice faltered a very little, and Rob's sufferings allowed him to break out.
'No,' he said, with a look of appeal in his eyes that were as grey as hers, 'it was a madness that let me write like that. The Scorn of Scorns is the most beautiful, the tenderest——' He stuck once more. Miss Abinger could have helped him again, but she did not. Perhaps she wanted him to go on. He could not do so, but he repeated what he had said already, which may have been the next best thing to do.