“Miss Grace was just ringing for tea when I left,” he returned. “No wonder you look cold or like a starved robin, Miss Mattie. Why are you walking so fast? there is no hurry, is there? I think you owe me some amends for keeping me standing for an hour in this bitter wind. There! why don’t you take my arm and hold on, or you will be blown away?”
Mattie always did as she was bidden, and Sir Harry’s tone was a little peremptory. He had been waiting for her, then; he had not quite forgotten her. Mattie began to feel a little less chilled and numb. If he would only say a kind word to her, she thought, she could go away more happily.
“I am thinking about that rejected cup of tea,” he said, suddenly, when they had walked for a moment in silence: “it will be all cleared away at the vicarage, and you do look so cold, Miss Mattie.”
“Oh, no, not very,” she corrected.
“But I say that you do,” he persisted, in quite a determined manner: “you are cold, and tired, and miserable,—there!”
“I—I am not particularly miserable,” but there were tears in Mattie’s voice, as she uttered this little fib. “I don’t quite like going away and saying good-bye to people.”
“Won’t your people be kind to you?” Then changing his tone, “I tell you what, Miss Mattie, no one is in a hurry for 353 you at home, and I don’t see why we should not enjoy ourselves. You remember my old friend Mrs. Sparsit, who lives up at Rose Cottage,—you know I saved her poodle from drowning one rough day, when some boys got hold of it: well, Mrs. Sparsit and I are first-rate friends, and I will ask her to give us some tea.”
“Oh, no,” faltered Mattie, quite shocked at this; for what would Grace say? “I only know Mrs. Sparsit a very little.”
“What does that matter?” returned Sir Harry, obstinately: “I am always dropping in myself for a chat. Now, it is no use your making any objection, Miss Mattie, for I have got a lot to say to you, and I don’t mean to part with you yet. They will only think you are still at Rock Building, and I suppose you are old enough to act without Miss Grace’s advice sometimes.”
Mattie hung her head without replying to this. What a feeble, helpless sort of creature he must think her! his voice seemed to express a good-humored sort of contempt. Well, he was right; she was old enough to do as she pleased, and she would like very much to go with him to Mrs. Sparsit’s. It was rather a reckless proceeding, perhaps; but Mattie was too down and miserable to argue it out, so she walked beside Sir Harry in a perfectly unresisting manner. Perhaps this was the last time she would enjoy his company for a long time: she must make the most of it.