“I am glad that you see me as a happy girl, Miss Carrington. I am completely happy to be doing what I’m doing here,” said Anne Dallas.
“What a lovely voice!” Miss Carrington groaned inwardly. “There is no more dangerous gift!”
“Would it be rank selfishness, Mr. Latham, if I begged this modest girl, who ignores her usefulness to you, and so to us all, to take pity on my friendlessness to-day and go back in the car with me? I am alone. Would you be angry? And will you humour me, Miss Dallas? I drive alone so much that one would expect me to get used to it, but I never do.”
“I’d like to go with you, Miss Carrington,” said Anne Dallas, truthfully. “Solitude in a car is more solitary than a carriage with only one in it. I suppose because the horses are friendly. Mr. Latham doesn’t want me, do you?”
“I don’t need you, Miss Dallas,” Richard Latham smilingly corrected her. “Here is little Anne who will play Casabianca, won’t you, Anne?”
“Do you mean stick? That’s the boy ‛when all but him had fled,’ isn’t it?” asked little Anne. “’Course I will! That’s how I started, and I’d rather stick, if you please.”
“Come, then, Miss Dallas,” said Miss Carrington, and Kit sprang to open the car door, his silence unbroken. “You are also ‛little Anne,’ in comparison with me.”
Anne Dallas jumped into the car and curled down beside Kit’s aunt, surprised, but happy in the friendliness which she was too simple to mistrust. It was with a gloomy face that Kit watched them away, knowing how inadequate to gauge his aunt’s mind Anne Dallas’s honesty was, and fearing mischief from the old lady’s cordiality. He knew perfectly well that in some way his aunt had learned his whereabouts and had come to investigate.
“Now, my dear, tell me how you happen to be in Cleavedge,” said Miss Carrington, turning toward the supple young figure luxuriously nestling beside her. “You are not the sort of girl we are accustomed to here.”
“Don’t condemn me unheard!” laughed Anne, refusing to hear the delicate emphasis that implied a compliment in Miss Carrington’s words; Miss Carrington was sorry to find her able to fence.