"He keeps me after school hours," she said; "once he would caress my hand, but I will have none of it. He sometimes speaks of the future, and certainly does conduct in most romantic manners, vowing he will wait for me, declaring that I must love him one day, that I am no longer a child, that he has adored me since I was but twelve."
"How long has this gone on?" I said, my face cold and twitching with rage.
"These three months," said Silver Heels, without embarrassment.
"And—and you never told me!"
She shook her head frankly.
"No, you were but a lad, and you could not understand such things."
For a moment I felt so small that I could have yelled aloud my vexation. What! I too young to be told the secrets of this chit of a child with her ridiculous airs and pretensions!
"But now that you are become a man," she continued, serenely, "I thought to tell you of this, because it tries my patience, yet pleases me, too, sometimes."
Boiling with fury and humiliation, I gave her a piece of my mind. I said that Mr. Butler was a sneak, a bully, and an old fool in his dotage to make love to a baby. I told her it did sicken me to hear of it; that there was no truth in it but vain imaginings, and that she had best confess to Sir William how this gentleman school-teacher did teach her his knowledge withal!
She listened, frowning and digging up moss with her knife.