“I longed so for mother and Johnnie,” she said, “and was always thinking of them, and the dear old home, and—and sometimes—of you, too, before I received your letter.”
“Of me!” Max said, moving a little nearer to her, while she went on:
“Yes, I’ve wanted to tell you how angry I was because you bought our home. I wrote you something about it, you remember, but I did not tell you half how bitter I felt. I know now you were not to blame, but I did not think so then, and said some harsh things of you to Archie; perhaps he told you. I said he might. Did he?”
“No,” Max answered, playing idly with the riding whip Maude held in her hand. “No, Archie has only told me pleasant things of you. I think he is very fond of you,” and he looked straight into Maude’s face, waiting for her reply.
It was surely nothing to him whether Archie were fond of Maude, or she were fond of Archie, and yet her answer was very reassuring and lifted from his heart a little shadow resting there.
“Yes,” Maude said, without the slightest change in voice or expression. “Archie and I are good friends. I have known him and played with him, and quarreled with him ever since I was a child, so that he seems more like a brother than anything else.”
“Oh, ye-es,” Max resumed, with a feeling of relief, as he let his arm rest on the high desk behind her, so that if she moved ever so little it would touch her.
There was in Max’s mind no thought of love-making. Indeed, he did not know that he was thinking of anything except the lovely picture the young girl made with the sunlight playing on her hair and the shy look in her eyes as, in a pretty, apologetic way she told him how she had disliked him and credited him with all the trouble which had come upon them since her father’s death.
“Why, I thought I hated you,” she said with energy.
“Hated me! Oh, Maude, you don’t hate me now, I hope;—I could not bear that,” Max said, letting the whip fall and taking Maude’s hand in his, as he said again, “You don’t hate me now?”