Miss Potts groaned.
“And the paint but just dry!” she murmured.
“But no answer could I get,” went on Geoffrey, “and at last”—lowering his voice and continuing in a tragic whisper—“at last I dropped my ha’penny back into my pocket and came away. ‘I must lay it out elsewhere,’ I moaned. But when I reached Ma Tickell’s shop, Pa Tickell was behind the door, and in his eye I read that he was going to request me to say my ‘twelve times’ backwards, and I knew he would not believe that my illness alone had made me forget it, so I crossed over and gazed in sadly at Ma Wall’s, but Ma Wall looked at me so scornfully that I came home; and here I find you gossip, gossip, gossip, and my ha’penny burning a hole in my pocket all the time. You know, Miss Potts, it is not the way to do business.”
“I know,” said Miss Potts, laughing; “but if you can tell me what you wanted particularly I’ll send it up as soon as I get home.”
“I couldn’t,” said Geoffrey solemnly; “I must see things before I can lay out my money to the best advantage.”
“Well, I promise not to be very long, Master Geoffrey, and then you shall go back with me, if you will, and choose what you like.”
“What is this nice little parcel?” asked Geoffrey, touching one that had been lying on the table ever since Miss Potts came in.
“Oh,” cried Miss Potts, jumping up with a little scream—“oh, how foolish of me! Why, that’s something I brought for Miss Priscilla, if she’ll accept it; and with talking so much, and being so glad to see her, it had clean gone out of my head;” and she placed the nice-looking little parcel in Priscilla’s hands.
“Well,” exclaimed Geoffrey, pretending to be deeply hurt, “I think you might have thought of my feelings, and waited till I had gone away. I felt certain it was for me, and now——”
Poor Miss Potts looked quite troubled, but Priscilla’s joyful cry rang out before she could speak.