“Yes,” Anne assented. “Now, Mr. Carrington, why were you so blue when you came this afternoon? Do you want to ‛trade,’ as children say? I told you my secret.”
“Oh, how can I?” Kit blushed to his hair. “All that I could tell you would sound like a spoiled, selfish kid! Aunt Anne has a guest coming, a young lady, and I’ve got to see it through, and I hate it! That’s about all.” Kit checked the violence with which he had brought out the word “hate,” and ended with a modification of the truth.
“Ah?” Anne raised her eyebrows. She thought that she saw more than Kit said, remembering what Miss Carrington had hinted of Kit’s prospects for marriage.
“But that ought not to be tragic!” Anne continued with a laugh. “It does sound like a boy who had had too much his own way! The only thing for you to do is to make the guest’s way your way. When you are both young that surely is easy to do! Is she pretty?”
“No, she isn’t! She’s a beauty,” grumbled Kit with such an effect of this being the unpardonable sin that Anne laughed outright. “And her way can’t be my way. That’s what Aunt Anne wants me to do: make our way parallel. I won’t! Don’t you give me the same advice!”
“I should not dream of giving you advice, Mr. Carrington,” said Anne with a funny, mischievous little look that further infuriated Kit. “Why should I? Nor shall I let you imply complaint of that doting old lady who is plainly wrapped up in her one affection—you! I’ve no doubt that she knows what’s good for you. Good-bye. And pray don’t gloom at your guest as you’re frowning on me now, for she won’t be out of doors where she can run if she gets too frightened. Fancy being shut up in the house with such an ogre as you look this minute!”
Anne put out her hand with a friendly smile, and Kit abandoned his intention to resent her making game of him.
He smiled at her instead, and joined in her laughter.
“Good-bye,” he said. “I’m coming around to talk to Mr. Latham. I need literature.”