“I understood that it was you who was—eh—who was—keeping company with Miss Roxbury?”
“Did you think so, Miss Elliott,” said Charlie, in some astonishment.
“Mr Snow,” said his wife, in a voice that brought him to her side in an instant. “You may have read in the Book, how there is a time to keep silence, as well as a time to speak, and the bairn had no thought of having her words repeated again, though she might have said that to you.”
She spoke very softly, so that the others did not hear, and Mr Snow would have looked penitent, if he had not looked so bewildered. Raising her voice a little, she added,—
“You might just go out, and tell Hannah to send Jabez over to Emily’s about the yeast, if she has taken too many steps to go herself; for Miss Rose is tired, and it is growing dark;—and besides, there is no call for her to go Hannah’s messages—though you may as well no’ say that to her, either.”
But the door opened, and Rose came in again.
“I can’t even find the jug,” she said, pretending great consternation. “And this is the second one I have been the death of. Oh! here it is. I must have left it here in the morning, and wee Rosie’s flowers are in it! Oh! yes, dear, I must go. Hannah is going, and I must go with her. She is just a little bit cross, you know. And, besides, I want to tell her the news,” and she went away.
Mr Snow, feeling that he had, in some way, been compromising himself, went and sat down beside his wife, to be out of the temptation to do it again, and Mr Millar said again, to Graeme, very softly this time,—
“Did you think so, Miss Elliott?”
Graeme hesitated.