"I promised to bring her something?" said John, with confusion: and then he became fiery red once more.
"Don't you think you'd like a stroll?" he added; "don't you think you'd like a game at billiards? there's always some one about that has nothing to do. It's a pity to lose the whole afternoon here."
"That's a broad hint, anyhow," cried the other, laughing. "Well, I'll go—but don't forget the Hatchet, old fellow, and the arbour in the garden, and the maid of the inn. Oh, I'm off. You need not spoil your books throwing them at me."
When he was alone John put down his pen again and took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. His countenance was crimson and the blood all a-boil in his veins. "What a fool I am, what a double-dashed fool I have been," he said to himself. And it was some time before he could resume the work at which he had so laboured and struggled. This was a greater interruption than anything made by the comrades who had thronged and troubled him. Yet after a while he surmounted this also, and betook himself to his work with such energy that he did at last struggle through. Well! it was not very much when it was done: probably no less valuable piece of work ever took so much time before. It had cost him a great deal of trouble, and now that it was completed it was of less than no use to anybody. The unfortunate tutor to whom he would have to read it would groan his head off before it was finished, and then it would be flung with relief into the fire. And yet he had spent all these days at it, cudgelled his brains, and almost cudgelled some of the idle fellows who had tried to stop him—for this wretched thing that was nothing, which was less than worthless! Few can perhaps see this so distinctly and with so powerful an apprehension as John did. He put it away in his desk with a grim smile, and then just as twilight was coming on he went out—to stretch his limbs and fill his lungs with that damp Oxford air which is perhaps just better than no air at all.
He was swinging along over Maudlin Bridge on his walk, "thinking hard," as he would have said, when there came suddenly up out of the twilight a little figure, which stopped and clasped its hands at sight of him, with a little cry. "Oh, is it really you, Mr Rushton?" which chimed in, in a very troublous and distressing manner, with John's thoughts.
"And is this you, Miss—Miss Millar," he said, perturbed, "so far from home?"
"Yes," she said, "it's a bit late. I've been in town doin' two or three little things for mother, and I see it was getting dark, and started runnin'—and then I thought that would just make folks stare—and then I saw as it was you——Oh, Mr Rushton, you've never been to see us—though you promised——"
"I have only been up a very little time. I—I have had a great deal to do."
"Ah," said the girl, "I know what you gentlemen has to do—just to find out every day something new to amuse yourselves—not like us as has to work."
"I assure you, Mary, it was work with me—real work, though you may not believe it," he said.