"A brick? A good fellow, is it?"
She nodded.
She stood in the light now, and he looked at her benignly.
"You are playing go-hide-and-find?" he suggested.
She shook her head.
"Hush! I'm waiting for my brother—to let him in. Aunt Kezia never dreams he could be so depraved as to be out after twenty-eight minutes past ten, so she has gone to bed with a serene mind."
He looked rather troubled.
"Your aunt is a worthy lady."
"The horse is a noble animal."
He peered at her through his spectacles in ludicrous bewilderment. Nell was half sitting on, half leaning against, the marble slab of the hall table. Her head was tilted back; the light caught the ends of her roughened hair and turned them into gold, and they made a sort of halo round her mischievous face.