"I should say you showed us quite satisfactorily how not to set off a rocket last night."
"Don't let us revert to that episode, about which we shall probably not agree. But go on. Let me hear more of your impressions. They are quite diverting."
"No more. I dare not presume further upon my advance absolution. Rather let me ask you to return candor for candor, and give me your impressions of me and my character, or lack of it."
"I have formed none."
"Is that quite true?"
"No," said Winifred, looking up, "it is not true at all. I formed impressions within the first ten minutes after I had seen you, only I called them, more modestly, prejudices."
"Prejudices? They were unfavorable then. Good! Let us have them!" and Flint settled [Pg 109] himself more comfortably, bracing his head against his clasped hands; and, leaning back against the bank of sand, he sat watching the little tufts of coarse grass springing up close beside him. Still Winifred was silent. At last Flint began himself:—
"You thought me rude and churlish, I suppose?"
"I certainly did not think you were Bayard and Sidney rolled together; but I admit you had some provocation," she answered lightly, "at least in our first meeting. When I demolished your new fishing-rod, I think you might have accepted my apologies more gracefully; and I think you need not have been so particularly uncivil when Jimmy and I tried to come to your assistance on the pond. I have not yet recovered from the reproof conveyed on that occasion by your manner, which plainly indicated that, in your opinion, it would have been more tactful for us to sail by, and ignore your disaster, or treat it as an episode which did not call for explanation or remark. I should have felt duly humiliated, no doubt; but I have become hardened to rebuffs, since I have been at Nepaug, for I meet with many, as I go about like a beggar from door to door in South East."
"Distributing tracts?" Flint asked, with eyebrows raised a little.