“What—what subject, Miss Rosedew? I have no idea what you mean.”
“That is altogether false. But I will tell you now. I mean the silly, ungentlemanly, and very childish manner, excusable only in such a boy, in which I have several times observed you loitering about in the forest.”
Bob knew what she meant right well, although she would not more plainly express it—his tracking of her footsteps. He turned as red as meadow–sorrel, and stammered out what he could.
“I am—very—very sorry. But I did not mean it. I mean—I could not help it.”
“You will be kind enough to help it now, for once and for all. Otherwise, my father, who has not heard of it yet, shall speak to yours about it. Insufferable impudence in a boy just come from school!”
Amy was obliged to turn away, for fear he should look up again, and see the laughter in her eyes. For all her wrath was feigned, inasmuch as to her Bob Garnet was far too silly a butterfly–boy to awake any real anger. But of late he had been intrusive, and it seemed high time to stop it.
“If I have done anything wrong, Miss Rosedew, anything in any way unbecoming a gentleman——”
“Yes, try to be a good boy again,” said Amy, very graciously; at the same time giving the stroke of grace to his masterpiece of mechanism, designed to catch the white mole alive; “now take up your playthings and go, if you please; for I expect a young lady here directly; and your little tools for cockchafer–spinning would barbarize the foreground of our sketch, besides being very ugly.”
“Oh!” cried Bob, with a sudden access of his fathers readiness—”you spin a fellow worse than any cockchafer, and you do it in the name of humanity!”
“Then think me no more a divinity,” answered Amy; because she must have the last word; and even Bob, young as he was, knew better than to paragogize the feminine termination. Utterly discomfited, as a boy is by a woman—and Amyʼs trouble had advanced her almost to that proud claim—Bob gathered up his traps and scuttled cleverly out of sight. She, on the other hand (laughing all the while at herself for her simple piece of acting, and doubting whether she had been right in doing even a little thing so much against her nature), there she sat, with her sketching–block ready, and hoped that Eoa would have the wit to come and meet her beloved Bob, now labouring under his fierce rebuff.