“I did not miss you at first,” said Harry, “and then I wanted Charlie to go for you, but—”
“He very properly refused. Don’t excuse yourself, Harry. And I had set my heart on comparing jackets with Miss Roxbury, too.”
“Why did you not stay and speak to her at the door, then?” said Harry, who had rather lost his presence of mind under his sister’s reproaches. He had hurried after her, fully intending to take her to task for being so stiff and distant, and he was not prepared to defend himself,—
“Why didn’t you wait and speak to her at the door?”
“Oh! you know, I could not have seen it well then, as she was in the carriage. It is very awkward looking up to carriage people, don’t you think? And, besides, it would not have been quite polite to the Goldsmiths,” added she, severely. “You know they befriended me when I was left alone.”
“Befriended you, indeed. I expected every minute to see your feather take fire as he bent his red head down over it. I felt like giving him a beating,” said Harry, savagely. Rose laughed merrily.
“My dear Harry! You couldn’t do it. He is so much bigger than you. At least, he has greater weight, as the fighting people say.”
“But it is all nonsense, Rose. I don’t like it. It looked to me, and to other people, too, very much like a flirtation on your part, to leave the rest, and go away with that big—big—”
“Doctor,” suggested Rose.
“And we shall have all the town, and Mrs Gridley, telling us next, that you—”