"No," Craik answered, looking up himself and laughing. "That's his way. Then to-day he's shocked at seeing so many ladies here. He doesn't like ladies, you know."
"How horrid of him! Why, what harm can we do here?"
"Harm! Why, Miss Lamb," Craik said with quaint politeness, "your visits are our greatest blessings!"
Craik knew the old garden well, he thought, and he had certainly been in it in all weathers. But to-day it came over him that he had never seen the place before looking so oddly green and shining. Certainly, when he and Ranken had walked there—poor Ranken! Craik smiled a little.
"What are you smiling at?" Miss Lamb asked.
"Smiling?" Craik said in embarrassment. "Why, was I smiling?"
"Certainly you were. It is strange, really it is, how much you are like a friend of mine in America. The way you smile reminds me so much of him. Really it is quite funny, the resemblance. But perhaps you don't like to be told you look like other people?"
"Oh yes, I do." Then he added, after a pause, with desperate and awkward courage, "if they are friends of yours."
Miss Lamb did not seem to notice either his compliment or his blush.
"How odd you should know Mr. Ranken," she said musingly. "I've not seen him lately. Is he as sentimental as ever?"