“No!”
“I’m quite proud of it,” says he, with a laugh in his fine eyes. He leaned forward a little, and made as if to touch her, but withdrew his hand. “I did not know,” says he, “that I was so clever. I have it all ready. I have every word in place. I’d like to say it––for my own pleasure, if not for yours. I think it would be a pity to let the pretty words waste themselves unsaid. I––I––hope 202 you’ll listen. I––I––really hope you will. And you will not?”
“No!” she cried, sharply. “No, no!”
“Why not?”
“No!” she repeated; and she slipped her hand into mine, and hid them both snugly in the folds of her gown, where John Cather could not see. “God wouldn’t like it, John Cather,” says she, her little teeth all bare, her eyes aflash with indignation, her long fingers so closely entwined with mine that I wondered. “He wouldn’t ’low it,” says she, “an He knowed.”
I looked at John Cather in vague alarm.
This Sir Harry Airworthy, K.C.M.G., I must forthwith explain, was that distinguished colonial statesman whose retirement to the quiet and bizarre enjoyments of life was so sincerely deplored at the time. His taste for the picturesque characters of our coast was discriminating and insatiable. ’Twas no wonder, then, that he delighted in my uncle, whose familiar companion he was in St. John’s. I never knew him, never clapped eyes on him, that I recall; he died abroad before I was grown presentable. ’Twas kind in him, I have always thought, to help my uncle in his task of transforming me, for ’twas done with no personal responsibility whatsoever in the matter, but solely of good feeling. I owed him but one grudge, and that a short-lived one, going back to the year when I was seven: ’twas by advice o’ Sir Harry that I was made to tub myself, every morning, in the water of the season, be it crusted with ice or not, with my uncle listening at the door to hear the splash and gasp.