“Oh, Archie, how you frightened me! Where have you been?”
Archie shrugged his shoulders at this.
“I am not aware, Matilda,”—for in severe moods he would call her by her full name, a thing she especially disliked from him,—“I did not know before that I was accountable to you for my actions. Neither am I particularly obliged to you for spying upon me in this way.” For the sight of Mattie at this time of night was peculiarly distasteful. Why was he to be watched in his own house?
“Oh, dear, Archie! How can you say such things? Spy on you, indeed! when there is a storm coming up, and I was so anxious.”
“I am very much obliged to you,” returned Archie, ironically; “but, as you see I am safe, don’t you think you had better take off that thing”—pointing to the obnoxious garment—“and go to bed?” And such was his tone that poor Mattie fled without a word, and cried a little in her dark room, because Archie would not be kind to her and let her love him, but was always finding fault with one trifle or other. To-night it was her poor old dressing-gown, which had been her mother’s, and had been 154 considered good enough for Mattie. And then he had called her a spy. And here she gave a sob that caught Archie’s ears as he passed her door.
“Good-night, you little goose!” he called out, for the sound made him uncomfortable; and though the words were contemptuous, the voice was not, and Mattie at once dried her eyes and was comforted.
But before Archie went to sleep that night he made up his mind that it was his duty as a clergyman and a Christian to look over Phillis’s wilfulness, and to befriend to the utmost of his power the strangers, widow and fatherless, that Providence had placed at his very gates.
“They are so very lonely, poor things!” he said to himself; “not a man about them. By the bye, I noticed she did not wear an engagement-ring.” But which was the “she” he meant, was an enigma known only to himself. “Not a man about them!” he repeated, in a satisfied manner, for as yet the name of Dick had not sounded in his ear.