"Not at all!" repeat I, scornfully, looking impatiently at him; "that is so likely, is not it?"—then "No not at all"—I continue, ironically, "he has run off with some one else—some one black!" (with a timely reminiscence of Bobby's happy flight of imagination).
"Not till when, then?"
"Not till after Christmas," reply I, sighing loudly, "which is almost as bad as not at all."
"I knew that!" he says, rather petulantly; "you told me that before!"
"I told you that before?" cry I, opening my eyes, and raising my voice; "why, how could I? I only heard it myself this morning!"
"It was not you, then," he says, composedly; "it must have been some one else!"
"It could have been no one else," retort I, hastily. "I have told no one—no one at least from whom you could have heard it."
"All the same, I did hear it" (with a quiet persistence); "now, who could it have been?" throwing back his head, elevating his chin, and lifting his eyes in meditation to the great depths of burning red in the beech's heart, above him—"ah!"—(overtaking the recollection)—"I know!"
"Who?" say I, eagerly, "not that it could have been any one."
"It was Mrs. Huntley!" he answers, with an air of matter-of-fact indifference.