'Because if he is, I wish you would think of me.'
He is half afraid when he has said this; it verges, perhaps, too nearly upon familiarity.
But she is not offended. Her eye, flattered by her shaven lawn, cannot rest very severely upon him who has shaven it for her. Her spirits have risen; exhilarated by the wholesome exercise, by the sunshine, by who knows what. Only when her look falls now and again upon Prue, still flung listlessly on the garden-seat, with her nosegay—not more flagging than she—withering on the ground beside her, does a cloud come over it.
'Should I get a good character from your last place?' returns she playfully.
'From the Foreign Office?'
'Was it the Foreign Office?' with a momentary impulse of curiosity for which she instantly pulls herself up. 'You know one always expects to get a character from the last place.'
'I do not know whether it is a good one. It is a nine-years' one.'
Then they set off again. Next time it is about Prue.
'I hope she is not ill?' his eyes following Margaret's to the little forlorn figure under the Judas-tree.
'No-o.'