“Oh yes; I have a little—enough to take us back to town, if you please—and to get me a few chops at the club till the governor turns up—who has a right to feed me at least until I come of age.”
“You must have got it out of Archie,” said Rosamond, her cheeks burning, springing from her seat, and standing between him and the door, as if to force an explanation. But Eddy only smiled.
“For a right down odious supposition—an idea that has neither sense nor possibility in it, commend me to a girl and a sister! How could I get it out of Archie? What had Archie to give? I think you must be taking leave of your senses,” he said.
Was it so?—Was it merely a sympathetic sense of the trouble in the house, and sorrow for Archie, whatever might be the cause of his banishment? Or was it some sense of guilt, some feeling that it was he who had led Archie away, and who ought to share in the penalty? But, to tell the truth, Rosamond could not identify any of these fine feelings with Eddy. He was not apt to feel compunctions: perhaps to take him at his word was the safest way.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Next morning, a rattle of pebbles thrown against the window, roused Marion, who was by nature an early riser, and who had been dressed for some time, though she had not gone downstairs. She opened the window, and saw Eddy below, making signs to her and pointing towards a path which led into the woods, across a broad stripe of sunshine. Eddy stood and basked in this light, making gestures, as if in adoration of the sun. He did not call to her, for in the clear morning air, his voice might have reached other ears than hers. But Marion called to him lightly, “I’m coming, I’m coming,” with no fear of any thing that could be said. She was not disturbed by the unceremonious character of his appeal to her attention. Marion’s antecedents made it a very natural thing, and no way to be reprehended, that a lad should call to his lass in this way. She ran downstairs, delighted with the summons, and joined him, almost hoping that Miss Marchbanks might see from her window and feel the superiority of the daughter of the house.
“What might you be wanting, rousing people when perhaps they were in their beds?” said Marion.
“You were not in your bed. I know you get up early. Let’s have a ramble,” said Eddy, “before any one knows.”
“Oh, is that all? but we can ramble wherever you please; and when the people are gone,” said Marion, with a sigh, “we’ll have it all to ourselves.”
“Do you wish that the people were not going, May?”