She was afraid I did not know how.
"You can teach me, Mrs. Roberts;" and I began without further permission. To say that Mrs. Roberts melted before all this amiability would be to say that Mrs. Roberts had ceased to be Mrs. Roberts. She was a degree or two less gruff, I believe, at the end of the long hour I spent in her service, in the seeding of those wretched raisins; but that was all, and fortunately I had not expected more. I undertook it as a penance, and it did not lose that character from any excess of kindness on her part.
After the raisins were dispatched, Mrs. Roberts applied herself to the copying of a recipe from an old cookery-book, for which she seemed in something of a hurry. Dorothy was waiting for it, Sylvie said. "You'd better let me do it for you, Mrs. Roberts," I said, leaning over her shoulder. Mrs. Roberts declined, with dignity, for some time, but at last thoughtfully slid the spectacles off her nose, and seemed to deliberate about granting my request. She was not a very ready scribe, and she had a dozen other things to do, all of which weighed with my urgency, and in two minutes I was at the desk, copying out of a venerable cookery-book, the receipt that Mrs. Roberts indicated. I was in pretty engrossing business, I found one duty succeeded another very regularly; Mrs. Roberts, I saw, had determined to get as much out of me now as she could.
A dread of draughts was one of her peculiarities, so the door and the front windows were closed against the pleasant breeze, and to this I attribute it that we were unconscious of the return of the riding party till the door opened suddenly and Mr. Rutledge entered.
"Mrs. Roberts," he said, "you are wanted below. Miss Churchill has hurt her ankle in getting out of the carriage, and I have come to you for some arnica."
Mrs. Roberts bustled over to the medicine chest, and, taking the bottle of arnica and a roll of linen in her hand, hurried out of the room; while Mr. Rutledge, crossing over to the table where I sat, stood looking down at me without speaking, while I nervously went on with my writing without raising my eyes.
"Why did you not go with us this morning?" he said at last, sitting down by the table.
"I didn't want to."
"That is a very good reason; but I think you would have done better to have thwarted your inclination for once. There are two reasons why it would have been wiser to have gone."
"What is one?" I demanded.