‘I’m not tired,’ said Nita.
‘Yes, you are,’ he replied, smiling his good, pleasant smile. ‘Come here, or I put on my hat and go home this moment.’
‘Home! This is as much your home as any other place,’ she said, complying with his behest.
‘More, since my sister Nita is in it. There!’ he added, taking his place beside her as she lay down, and gave a long sigh of relief; ‘now tell me what you have been doing this afternoon.’
‘That you may give one of your favourite lectures, I suppose,’ said Nita, smiling. But by degrees she told him the history of the afternoon’s adventure, while it grew dark within the room, and their voices sank lower, and Mr. Bolton read on, and Miss Shuttleworth’s needles clicked, clicked, as if they went by clockwork.
‘Oh, John! how ashamed I was! I could not look him in the face,’ murmured Nita, at the end of this conversation.
‘Ashamed—of what?’ asked John, in his slow tones, and looking at her with his near-sighted eyes.
‘Of my carelessness, my folly, which so nearly cost him his life!’
‘And you yours. I tell you what it is, Nita; it must have been a very engrossing conversation that caused you to loose your hold on the ribbons. Is it allowable to ask what it was all about?’
‘Partly about you,’ replied Nita, surprised into the admission by this sudden appearance in John of an astuteness with which she had not for a moment credited him.