My ears had never been conscientiously closed to the voice of idle praise, but with this, for some reason, I was not well pleased.
"Your attitude was certainly devotional," I answered, without haste. "Your friend," I added, "must be something of a seer. Here are the literal glasses!"
"Nonsense!" said Mr. Rollin, coloring slightly; "you know I didn't mean that—just being a little near-sighted. I said spectacles. Besides," and the fisherman looked me full and unblushingly in the face—"if I had such eyes as yours, by Jove, I wouldn't mind whether I could see anything out of 'em or not!"
"You will hardly expect me to thank you for that," I murmured, with a sincere flash of indignation; not that I was unmindful of certain reckless moods of old, when I had found it not impossible to listen, even with calmness, to vain demonstrations of this sort, but I felt that I was a different person now, in a different sphere of action.
Mr. Rollin knew nothing of me except that I was the teacher of the Wallencamp school—a doubtful position to his mind.
He fancied that he might "pick me up," to "amuse" himself with, I thought, and at the reflection I felt an angry glow rising from heart to cheek.
Meanwhile the fisherman gnawed his moustache ruefully. This idle worldling could assume, occasionally, a whimsical helplessness of expression, with an air of aggrieved and childlike candor, somewhat baffling to the stern designs of justice.
"Now I've offended you," he began, exchanging his tone of easy nonchalance for one of slow and awkward dejection. "And you think I've had the impudence—well, if either one of us two is going to be taken in, Miss Hungerford, I can tell you it's a blamed sight more likely to be me; but you're prejudiced against me, I can see. You were prejudiced against me that first night. I know how those old women talk. They've got an idea, somehow, that I'm a scapegrace, and a desperate character. And, on my word, Miss Hungerford, I'm considered a real model chap there at home, and make speeches to the little boys and girls in Sunday School, and all that sort of thing. On my word, I do."
Mr. Rollin spoke quite warmly. I could not help laughing at his droll self-vindication.
"I should like to ask you to speak to my little boys and girls!" I said; "but it's too harrowing to the feelings. I listened to one address this afternoon."