“Oh, hush, hush,” said Kate; “don’t pay me any compliments. You know I am only a stranger, though somehow I feel as if you all belonged to me. It is because your mother has been so kind; and then—you saved my life.”
“That was nothing,” cried John; “I wish it had cost me something, then I might have felt as if I deserved——”
“What? my thanks?” she said, softly, playing with him.
“No, but to have saved you—for I did save you; though it did not cost me anything,” he said, regretfully; “and that is what I shall grudge all my life.”
“How very droll you are!” said Kate, after a long look at him, in which she tried to fathom what he meant without succeeding; “but never mind what it cost you. My opinion is, that, after such a thing as that, people become a sort of relations—don’t you think so? and you are bound to tell me when I ask you. Please, Mr John, is it convenient for your mother to have me now?—should I stay now? I shall be guided by what you say.”
He gave an abrupt idiotic laugh, and got up and walked about the room. “Of course you must stay,” he said; “of course it is convenient. What could it be else? It would be cruel to leave us so abruptly, after all.”
“Well, I am very comfortable,” said Kate; “I shall like it. The only thing was for your mother. If she should not want me to stay—but anyhow, the responsibility is upon you now; and so, as Dr Mitford says, as we have settled that, tell me what we are going to do.”
“To do?” said John, with open eyes.
“To amuse ourselves,” said Kate; “for I am a stranger, you know. How can I tell how you amuse yourselves in this house?”
“We don’t amuse ourselves at all,” said John; and as he had been coming nearer and nearer, now he drew a chair close to her sofa, and sat down and gazed at her with a new light in his face. He laughed, and yet his eyes glowed with a serious fire. He was amused and surprised, and yet the serious nature underneath gave a certain meaning to everything. He took the remark not as the natural expression of a frivolous, amusement-loving creature, but as a sudden, sweet suggestion which turned to him all at once the brighter side of life. “I think we have rather supposed that amusement was unnecessary—that it was better, perhaps, not to be happy. I don’t know. In England, I suspect, many people think that.”