"It is very early. I don't see why I have to go so soon! Can't I help you to put away the jam-pots?"
"You can go home, my dear boy. Good-by! I sha'nt forget—"
"Oh, good-by!" and Jack flung off in half a huff, as auntie would have said.
Hildegarde looked after him thoughtfully. "How young he is!" she said to herself. "I wonder if boys always are. And yet he is two years older than I by the clock, if you understand what I mean!" She addressed the jam-pots, in grave confidence, and began to put them away in their own particular cupboard.
CHAPTER XV.
AT THE BROWN COTTAGE.
Hildegarde's mind was still full of her cousin and his future, as she sat that afternoon in Mrs. Lankton's kitchen, with her sewing-school around her. The brown cottage with the green door had been found the most central and convenient place for the little class, and it was an object of absorbing interest to Mrs. Lankton herself. She hovered about Hildegarde and her scholars, predicting disease and death for one and another, with ghoulish joy.
"Your ma hadn't ought to let you come out to-day, Marthy Skeat. You warn't never rugged from the time you was a baby; teethin' like to have carried you off, and 'tain't too late now. There's wisdom teeth, ye know. Well, it's none o' my business, but I hope your ma's prepared. Good-mornin', Miss Grahame! I'm tellin' Marthy Skeat she ain't very likely to see long skirts, comin' out in this damp air. You're peart, are ye? That's right! Ah! they can look peart as ain't had no troubles yet. I was jist like you oncet, Miss Grahame. I've had a sight o' trouble! no one don't know what I've ben through; don't know nothin' about it. You've fleshed up some since ye came here, ain't ye? Well, they do flesh up that way sometimes, but 'tain't no good sign. There's measles about, too, they say."