"Of course I do!" said Hilda.
"How I fell over a chair, and then knocked down a hanging-basket? Hilda, I do believe I should have made away with myself that night, if there had been any weapons about. I was simply full of rage and misery; I hated everybody, myself included; and it did seem to me as if you might let me alone, and not insist upon making me talk. I couldn't talk, you know."
"No, dear, you certainly could not; but you had to learn. And you are not sorry now, Jack?"
"Sorry! well, rather not! Fancy, if I had stayed the hateful noodle that I was that night! Fact is, I was brimful of my own self; that was the trouble with me. Ah—who are all these people Uncle Tom has been telling me about, next door, in the yellow house? I didn't bargain for strangers, Hilda!" And my lord looked slightly injured.
"No, dear!" said Hildegarde. "Of course we ought to have thought of that, and have prevented their coming here. We don't own the house, it is true, but we might have turned the hose on them, or put rat-poison about, or kept them off in some way."
"Oh, there you go!" cried Jack. "I say! I haven't been teased for two years. I forget what it's like. But seriously, are they really nice? Do you care for them? I—I really am jealous, Hilda; you needn't laugh. I thought I was going to have you all to myself, and now here are a lot of people,—with unreasonable names, it seems to me,—and Uncle Tom says they are your most intimate friends, and that he loves them all like brothers."
"That was one of them you met last night," said Hildegarde, demurely.
"Oh, I say! I was going to ask you,—was it, though? of course; I didn't notice her name much, but I remember now. Well, Hilda, she is a musician, and of course I'm glad you have had such a friend as that. I liked her face, too,—"
"You couldn't see her face!"
"Oh, I saw enough. I saw her eyes just for a minute, and I know what she's like, anyhow; didn't I play the Mendelssohn Concerto with her? So that's all right, and I mean to get her to play with me a lot, if she will. I like to play with the piano, only you so seldom find any one—any pianist—who understands the violin; they are generally thinking about their own playing. But—well, what was I saying? It is so jolly to be talking one's own language again, and talking to you. I just want to go on and on, whether I say anything or not."