'You do surprise me now, Mr. Angus,' said Mary, light-hearted all at once, 'for you know you scarcely wrote like that.'
'Ah, but I have read the book since I saw you,' Rob blurted out, 'and that has made such a difference.'
A wiser man might have said a more foolish thing. Mary looked up smiling. Her curiosity was aroused, and at once she became merciless. Hitherto she had only tried to be kind to Rob, but now she wanted to be kind to herself.
'You can hardly have re-read my story since last night,' she said, shaking her fair head demurely.
'I read it all through the night,' exclaimed Rob, in such a tone that Mary started. She had no desire to change the conversation, however; she did not start so much as that.
'But you had to write papa's speech?' she said.
'I forgot to do it,' Rob answered awkwardly. His heart sank, for he saw that here was another cause he had given Miss Abinger to dislike him. Possibly he was wrong. There may be extenuating circumstances that will enable the best of daughters to overlook an affront to her father's speeches.
'But it was in the Mirror. I read it,' said Mary.
'Was it?' said Rob, considerably relieved. How it could have got there was less of a mystery to him than to her, for Protheroe had sub-edited so many speeches to tenants that in an emergency he could always guess at what the landlords said.
'It was rather short,' Mary admitted, 'compared with the report in the Argus. Papa thought——' She stopped hastily.