'So you escaped at last!' he says, with a sort of groan. 'I watched to see how long you could stand it.'
The shadow that the star-beams, and the violet breath, and Heaven knows what other gentle influence, have chased from her features, settles down on them again.
'I am never fond of comic songs,' she answers stiffly; 'and I do not think that that was a particularly favourable specimen.'
He makes a gesture of disgust.
'Pah!' Then adds: 'I should have followed you before, only that I wanted to get Prue away. I knew that you would be glad if I could; but it was impossible!'
He has never spoken of her as 'Prue' before; but in his present agitation—an agitation for which Peggy is at a loss to account—he has obviously clean forgotten the formal prefix.
She is too much touched by his thoughtfulness for her to answer.
'My chief motive for following you,' continues he, speaking in an unusual and constrained voice, 'was that I thought I might possibly not have another opportunity of giving you this.'
As he speaks he puts a small parcel into her hands.
'It is only the ladder for the birds.'