“This aint the one you said. You’ve been and eat it, you greedy!”
“Now!” pleaded Miss Clara, whose fingers tingled to box his ears, though she prolonged the word in her most coaxing tone, “Howard! Howard! could you? your own poor Clara! You shall come up and have any two others you like best, when I come back, if Mr. Herbert allows it,” and with a smile, and a light kiss on the boy’s forehead, who plunged away from her muttering, that brilliant vision vanished, leaving William standing for a moment wondering, and thinking how graceful and pretty she looked in that becoming get-up.
“Well,” thought William, that night compunctiously and pleased, “I believe I have done them an injustice. I forgot that I was a total stranger, and expected a reception different perhaps from what I was entitled to. But this perhaps is better; people whose liking and confidence move slowly, and whose friendship, bestowed gradually, is not suddenly withdrawn.”
And so he went to sleep more happily.
CHAPTER XXVII.
FROM KINCTON TO GILROYD
A month passed away with little change. Thanks to the very explicit injunction, constantly repeated, to teach his pupil no more than his pupil wished to learn, William Maubray got on wonderfully well with that ill-conditioned brat, who was “the hope of the house of Kincton Knox.” Still, notwithstanding this, and all those flattering evidences of growing favour vouchsafed by the ladies of the mansion, the weeks were very long. Miss Clara, although now and then she beamed on him with a transient light, yet never actually conversed; and magnificent and dreary Mrs. Kincton Knox, whether gracious or repellent, was nearly equally insupportable.