“Now you are all right,” he remarked, presently. “You look quite a different sort of body now. When I first came in you reminded me of Cinderella in a brown dress, sitting all alone, by a very black fire. I do believe you were on the verge of crying. Now, weren’t you, Miss Mattie?” And Mattie, with much shame, owned to the impeachment.
“And what was it all about, eh?” he asked, with such a coaxing peremptoriness that Mattie confessed that she was rather dull at the thought that nobody wanted her, and that she must go home; and, on being further pressed and questioned, out it all came,—Mattie’s shortcomings, her stupid ways, and the provocation she offered to home criticism. Sir Harry listened and laughed, and every now and then threw in a jesting remark; but so encouraging was his manner and so evident his interest that Mattie found herself talking as she had never done to any one but Miss Middleton. Before she had finished, Sir Harry knew all about the household in Lowder Street, and had formed a tolerable estimate of every member of the family,—the depressed father; the care-worn and some what stern mother; the boys, clever and handsome and flippant; the girls in all stages of awkwardness; and the quiet, talented Grace, who was every one’s right hand, and who had come to the vicarage to dispossess Mattie.
“Come, now, I call that hard; I do, upon my word!” he repeated more than once at the end of Mattie’s little narrative. “Women have a lot put upon them. I dare say if I had had sisters I should have bullied them sometimes. Men are awful tyrants, aren’t they, Miss Mattie?”
Mattie took this literally.
“I do not think you would be a tyrant, Sir Harry,” she returned, simply, and then wondered why he suddenly colored up to the roots of his hair.
“Oh, there is no knowing,” he replied, in an embarrassed tone. “I have never had any one to bully. I think I shall try my hand on Dulce, only she is such a little spit-fire. Well, I must be going,” he went on, straightening himself. “By the bye, I shall not see you again until Tuesday; I have to run over to Oldfield about a lot of business I have in hand. Do you know Oldfield?”
“Oh, no; but Nan and Phillis have described it so often that I seem as though I have been there.” 314
“It is a niceish place, and I am half inclined to settle there myself; there is a house going that would just suit me.”
Mattie’s face lengthened: she did not like the idea of losing Sir Harry, he had been so good-natured and kind to her.
“One would never see you if you live at Oldfield,” she said, a little sorrowfully; and again Sir Harry looked embarrassed.