‘I think I can survive even that,’ answered John, who felt grateful to this young person for having come to his rescue at a moment when he felt himself curiously embarrassed. ‘Mr. Sampson has been very kind to me.’
‘If you can only manage to endure him he is an awfully good-natured little fellow,’ said Miss Clare with her undergraduate air. She modelled her manners and opinions upon those of her brother, and was in most things a feminine copy of the Oxonian. ‘But how do you contrive to get on with his sister? She is quite too dreadful.’
‘I confess that she is a lady whose society does not afford me unqualified delight,’ said John, ‘but I believe she means kindly.’
‘Can a person with white eyelashes mean kindly?’ inquired Celia, with a philosophical air. ‘Has not Providence created them like that as a warning, just as venomous snakes have flat heads?’
‘That is treating the matter rather too seriously,’ said John. ‘I don’t admire white eyelashes, but I am not so prejudiced as to consider them an indication of character.’
‘Ah,’ replied Celia, with a significant air, ‘you will know better by-and-by.’
She was only twenty, but she talked to John Treverton with as assured a tone as if she had been ages older than he in wisdom and experience of life.
‘How pretty the gardens are at this season!’ said Treverton, looking round admiringly, and addressing his remark to Laura.
‘Ah, you have only seen them in winter,’ she answered; ‘perhaps you would like to walk round the orchard and shrubberies?’
‘I should, very much.’