"Did he!" cried Mrs. Bent in surprise. "Well, that's a great thing for him to do. He don't favour new-comers, sir."
"He has so far favoured me. I say, Mrs. Bent," added the artist, a laughing look in his bright eyes, "what a pretty girl that is, up there!"
Mrs. Bent raised her own eyes from the stripping, and shot forth an inquiring glance. He was helping himself to the ripest bunches.
"Miss Ethel Reene! Well, so she is, sir, and as good as she is pretty. There's no love lost--as it is said--between her and her stepmother. At any rate, on Mrs. Castlemaine's part. The servants say Miss Ethel gets snubbed and put upon above a bit. She has to give way finely to the little one."
"Who is the little one?--Just look at this large bunch! Twenty on it, I know."
"You'll get a surfeit, sir, if you eat at these sharp currants like that when you are so hot.
"Not I. I never tasted any so good."
"I shall charge you for then, sir," she went on, laughing.
"All right. Charge away. I have heard my father tell a tale of going into a cherry-orchard once when he was a lad, he and three more boys. They paid sixpence each, and eat what they liked. I fancy all four had a surfeit, or something, after that."
"I dare be bound. Boys in a cherry-orchard! Do you get fine currants in France, sir?"