Which was very bad. “It must be jolly,” remarked the unconscious tormentor, “to have eight hundred pounds a year, and be a rector!”
“Daintry!” Kate cried in horror.
“Why, what is the matter?” asked Daintry, turning suddenly to her sister with wide-open eyes. Her look of aggrieved astonishment at once overcame Lindo’s gravity, and he laughed aloud. He was not without a charming sense, still novel enough to be pleasing, that Daintry was right. It was jolly to be a rector and have eight hundred a year!
That laugh came in happily. It seemed to sweep away the cobwebs of embarrassment which had lain so thickly about two of the party. Lindo began to talk pleasantly, pointing out this or that reach of the river, and Kate, meeting his cheery eyes, put aside a faint idea of apologizing which had been in her head, and replied frankly. He told them tales of summer voyages between lock and lock, and of long days idly spent in the Wargrave marshes; and, as the identification of Mapledurham and Pangbourne and Wittenham and Goring rendered it necessary that they should all cross and recross the carriage, they were soon on excellent terms with one another, or would have been if the rector had not still detected in Kate’s manner a slight stiffness for which he could not account. It puzzled him also to observe that, though they were ready, Daintry more particularly, to discuss the amusements of London and the goodness of cousin Jack, they both grew reticent when the conversation turned toward Claversham and its affairs.
At Oxford he got out to go to the bookstall.
“Jack was right,” said Daintry, looking after him. “He is nice.”
“Yes,” her sister allowed, rising and sitting down again in a restless fashion. “But I wish we had not fallen in with him, all the same.”
“It cannot be helped now,” said Daintry, who was evidently prepared to accept the event with philosophy.
Not so her sister. “We might go into another carriage,” she suggested.
“That would be rude,” said Daintry calmly.