He found her in a little arbor, looking pale and tired, as if she had not slept; but she smiled brightly as he came up, and made some remark about the pleasant morning. He wanted her to talk of Georgie,—wanted to be reassured that he had done well for himself; but as nothing had been said to her on the subject, she did not feel at liberty to introduce it, and so the conversation drifted as far as possible from Miss Burton, and turned at last upon Edna, whom Roy hoped eventually to have at Leighton.
“She will come, of course, when I am married,” he said. “She can then have no excuse for not coming.”
“Perhaps your wife would not like her,” Edna suggested, and Roy replied:
“I am sure she will. Georgie is not hard to please, and from Edna’s letters I judge her to be a very bright, sprightly little body. There’s a good deal of mischief about her, I guess. I saw her once in the cars with some of her schoolmates. I had been very sick and was still an invalid, nervous and irritable, and afraid of the least breath of air. Girl-like, they opened all the windows near them, and mother got a cinder in her eye, and I began to sneeze, and at last asked the sauciest looking one to shut the window, not pleasantly, you know, but savagely, as if I were the only person to be considered in the car. She did shut it with a bang, and then avenged herself by making a caricature of me, shivering in a poke bonnet, and called me a Miss Betty.”
“How did you know that?” Edna asked, looking up with so much surprise as almost to betray herself.
She had not thought of that sketch since the day when it was made, and she was curious to hear how Roy came to know about it.
“She dropped it as she left the car, either purposely or accidentally, and mother picked it up,” Roy said. “I have it still, and if I ever see her and know her well, I mean to show it to her and have some fun with it,” he continued, while Edna asked, a little uneasily:
“Then you were not angry with her for her impertinence?”
“Yes, I was at the time, very angry, and wanted to box her ears; but that only lasted a little time, and I was glad to see myself as others saw me. I do believe it did me good. She must be something of an artist, for even as a caricature the picture was a good one. I wish I knew where she was. I must write to-day, and tell her of my engagement.”
He was trying to introduce that subject again, but Edna made no reply. His mention of the picture had sent her off on an entirely different train of thought, and she was glad that just then the breakfast bell rang, and brought their walk to an end.