'Then,' commented the Senator, 'you must permit me indeed to congratulate you. It is unusual to find business acumen and enterprise combined with such a literary talent as yours.'
This was pleasing, if stilted. It was beginning to be possible for Henry to smile.
Then Cicely clinched matters.
'You promised to come and read me the others, Mr Calverly. Oh, but you did! You must come. Really! Let me see—I know I shall be at home to-morrow evening.'
Then, for a moment, Cicely seemed to falter. She turned questioningly to her aunt.
Madame Watt certainly knew the situation. She had heard Henry discussed in relation to the Mamie Wilcox incident. She knew how high feeling was running in the village. Just what her motives were, I cannot say. Perhaps it was her tendency to make her own decisions and if possible to make different decisions from those of the folk about her. The instinct to stand out aggressively in all matters was strong within her. And she liked Henry. The flare of extreme individuality in him probably reached her and touched a curiously different strain of extreme individuality within herself. She hated sheep. Henry was not a sheep.
As for Cicely's part of it, I know she had been thrilled when Henry read her the first ten stories. She had read more than the Sunbury girls; and she saw more in his oddities than they were capable of seeing. To fail in any degree to conform to the prevailing customs and thought was to be ridiculous in Sunbury. But she had no more forgotten the jeers that had followed Henry from this very carriage as he chased his hat down Simpson Street the preceding day than had Henry himself. Nor had she forgotten that Herbert de Casselles had been one of that unkind group. And as she certainly knew what she was about, despite her impulsiveness, I prefer to think that her action was deliberately kind and deliberately brave.
'Come to dinner,' said Madame Watt shortly but with a sort of rough cordiality. 'Seven o'clock. To-morrow evening. Informal dress. All right, Watson.'
Cicely settled back, her eyes bright; but gave Henry only the same suddenly impersonal little nod of good-bye that she gave Herbert de Casselles.
The footman leaped to the box. The remarkable carriage rolled luxuriously away on its rubber tyres.