He disappeared into the kitchen, probably to perform the ablutions needful after his day's walk and work, for it was several minutes before he returned. Charley had carried the game-bag to the mound under the tree, and was exhibiting its contents—mostly snipe and red-winged black birds—to his little cousin.
"It is refreshing to see something in the shape of man that is neither an effeminate dandy nor a business machine," soliloquized Sarah. "Ten miles on foot! I would like to set that task for certain of our Broadway exquisites!"
"She isn't a bit like a city girl!" Aunt Sarah was saying, as she followed Philip into the outer air.
"I am glad to hear that she is likely to be a nice companion for you, madam. I thought, from her appearance, that you would suit each other," was the reply, certainly respectful enough, but whose lurking accent of dry indifference sent the blood to Sarah's face.
Hastily withdrawing from the open window, and beyond the reach of the voices that discussed her merits, she waited to recover her equanimity before going downstairs. In vain she chided herself for her sudden heat. Mortified she was, and even more ashamed of herself than angry with the cool young man who had pronounced her to be a fitting associate for her excellent but unpolished aunt. While his every look and intonation bespoke the educated gentleman, a being as different in mental as in physical muscle from the fops who formed her sister's train, had he weighed her against the refined woman of his own class and clime, and adjudged her this place? At heart she felt the injustice, and, stimulated by the sting, arose the resolve that he should learn and confess his error. Not tamely or willingly would she accept an ignoble station at the hands of one whom she inwardly recognized as capable of a true valuation of what she esteemed worthy.
She looked haughty, not humbled, when she took her seat opposite her critic at the tea-table. "A nice companion," she was saying over to herself. The very phrase, borrowed, as it was, from Aunt Sarah's vocabulary, seemed to her seasoned with contempt. She kept down fire and scorn, however, when Mr. Benson accosted her with the tritest of remarks upon the probable heat of the day in town as contrasted with the invigorating breeze, with its faint, delicious sea flavor, that rustled the grapevines and fluttered the white curtains at the dining-room door and windows. Her answer was not exactly gracious, but it advanced the one tempting step beyond a mere reply.
Thus was the ice broken, and for the rest of the meal, Aunt Sarah and "Uncle Nathan"—as he requested his nieces to style him—had respite from the duty of active entertainment, so far as conversation went. To Sarah's surprise, Mr. Benson talked to her almost as he would have done to another man. He spoke of notable persons, places, and books—things of which she had heard and read—without affectation of reserve or a shade of pretension; and to her rejoinders—brief and constrained for awhile—then, as she forgot herself in her subject, pertinent, earnest, salient, he gave more than courteous heed. It was the unaffected interest of an inquirer; the entire attention of one who felt that he received more than he gave.
They parted for the night with a bow and a smile that was with each a mute acknowledgment of pleasure derived from the companionship of the other; and if neither looked forward to the meeting of the morrow as a renewal of congenial intercourse, both carried to their rest the effects of an agreeable surprise in the events of the evening.