“Don’t be frightened!” he was calling, as he ran. “He will not hurt you!”
Hester had shrieked feebly, and lay almost swooning among her cushions. Hetty had not uttered a sound, but, as the master laid his hand on the dog’s collar her knees gave way under her, and she sank down by the cripple’s chair, her head resting upon the edge of the wicker side. She was fighting desperately for composure, or the semblance of it, and did not look up when March began to apologize.
“I am awfully sorry,” he panted, ruefully penitent. “And so will Thor—my dog, you know—be when he understands how badly he has behaved. He is seldom so inhospitable.”
The words brought up Hetty’s head and wits.
“Are we trespassing?” she queried anxiously. “We thought that this orchard was a part of the parsonage grounds, or we would not have come. It is we who should beg your pardon.”
“By no means!” He had taken off his hat, and in his regretful sincerity looked handsomer than when his eyes had smiled, concluded Hester, whose senses were rapidly returning. “My name is Gilchrist, and my father’s grounds adjoin those of the parsonage. He had the gate cut between your garden and the orchard, that the clergyman’s family might be as much at home here as ourselves. I hope you will forgive my dog’s misdemeanor, and my heedlessness in not seeing you before he had a chance to frighten you.”
Summoning something of his father’s gracious stateliness, he continued, more formally:
“Have I the pleasure of addressing Miss Wayt?”
Bow and question were for Hetty. Hester’s voice, thin and dissonant, replied with old-fashioned decorum of manner, but in unconventional phrase:
“I have the misfortune to be Miss Wayt. This is Mr. Wayt’s wife’s sister, Miss Alling.”