CHAPTER XI.
EDGE TOOLS.
"I have something to say to you, Fluff," said Frances.
The young girl was standing in her white dress, with her guitar hung in its usual attitude by her side. She scarcely ever went anywhere without this instrument, and she was fond of striking up the sweetest, wildest songs to its accompaniment at any moment.
Fluff, for all her extreme fairness and babyishness, had not a doll's face. The charming eyes could show many emotions, and the curved lips reveal many shades either of love or dislike. She had not a passionate face; there were neither heights nor depths about little Fluff; but she had a very warm heart, and was both truthful and fearless.
She had been waiting in a sheltered part of the garden for over an hour for Arnold. He had promised to go down with her to the river—he was to sketch, and she was to play. It was intensely hot, even in the shadiest part of the squire's garden, but by the river there would be coolness and a breeze. Fluff was sweet-tempered, but she did not like to wait an hour for any man, and she could not help thinking it aggravating of Arnold to go on pacing up and down in the hot sun by the squire's side. What could the squire and Arnold have to say to each other? And why did the taller and younger man rather stoop as he walked? And why was his step so depressed, so lacking in energy that even Fluff, under her shady tree in the distance, noticed it?
She was standing so when Frances came up to her; now and then her fingers idly touched her guitar, her rosy lips pouted, and her glowing dark-blue eyes were fixed reproachfully on Arnold's distant figure.
Frances looked pale and fagged; she was not in the becoming white dress which she had worn during the first few days of Arnold's visit; she was in gray, and the gray was not particularly fresh nor cool in texture.
"Fluff, I want to speak to you," she said.
And she laid her hand on the girl's shoulder—then her eyes followed Fluff's; she saw Arnold, and her cheeks grew a little whiter than before.