Dame Winnifrith.—“Fie on ye, damsels! Call ye that a saying of your prayers? Fie on ye!”
Old Play.
She had stopped just in front of him. This time her voice could not fail to attract his attention, and with a slight start—for his thoughts had been busied with matters far away from the present—he turned a little and looked at her. This was what he saw: a girl with a face still slightly tanned by last summer’s sun—or was the brown tinge, growing rosier on the cheeks, her normal complexion? afterwards he thought of it, and could not decide—very bright, very wavy chestnut-coloured hair, ruffled a little about the temples, and growing low on the forehead; pleasant, hearty eyes, looking up at him with something of embarrassment, but more of amusement, eyes of no particular colour, but good, nice eyes all the same—a girl whom it is difficult to describe, but whose face, nevertheless, once learned, could not easily be forgotten. There was something about it which softened the seriousness of the man looking at her; his own face relaxed, and when he spoke it was with a smile, which, beginning in the grave, dark eyes before it journeyed down to the mouth, so transformed the whole face that Mary mentally improved upon her former dictum; there was certainly something not “rather” only, but “very nice” about the elder of the strangers “when he smiled.” Mary had yet to learn the rarity of these pleasant gleams of sunshine.
“I beg your pardon,” he said—for notwithstanding that Mary’s alpaca was several degrees shabbier than her sister’s and that her little white bonnet was of the plainest “home-make,” he felt not an instant’s doubt as to her being that which even in the narrowest conventional sense is termed “a lady”—“I am so sorry. I had no idea you were speaking to me. I shall tell my aunt and sister what you say; it is very kind of your—I beg your pardon again. I did not quite catch what you said.”
He had been on the point of turning to speak to his companions, but stopped for a moment, looking at Mary inquiringly as he did so.
“My message was from my mother, Mrs Western—I should have explained,” Mary replied. “I am—my father is the clergyman; we live at the Rectory opposite.”
She bent her head in the direction of her home. The stranger’s brow cleared.
“Of course,” he said, “I understand. Thank you very much.—Alys,” he called, hastening a step or two in the direction of the two ladies—“Alys, tell your aunt that this young lady has come to ask if you would like to wait at the Rectory till the carriage comes.”
The girl caught the sound of her own name in a moment; she had quick ears.