And Kate, her eyes downcast, knew by instinct how it was with him, and what he was thinking. “I have been telling Dr. Gregg,” she said hurriedly, when he returned, “how we missed our train yesterday.”
“Rather how I missed it for you,” Lindo answered gravely, much engaged apparently with his breakfast.
“Ah, yes, it was very funny!” fired off the doctor, watching each mouthful they ate. Daintry had finished, and was sitting back in her chair kicking the leg of the table monotonously; not in the best of tempers apparently. “Very funny indeed!” the doctor continued. “An accident, I hope?” with a little sniggling laugh.
“Yes!” said the rector, looking up at him with a black brow and steadfast eyes—“it was an accident.”
Gregg was a little cowed by the look, and in a moment, with a muttered word or two, fidgeted himself away, cursing the general superciliousness of parsons and the quiet airs of this one in particular. He was a little dog-in-the-mangerish man, ill-bred, and, like most ill-bred men, resentful of breeding in others. The fact that he had a sneaking liking for Kate did not tend to lessen his disgustful wonder how the Bonamy girls and the new rector came to be travelling together—which, indeed, to any Claversham person would have seemed a portent. But, then, Lindo did not know that.
The objectionable item removed, and the temptation to remark upon him overcome, Lindo soon recovered his good temper, and rattled away so pleasantly that the train time seemed to all of them to come very quickly. “There,” he said, as he handed the last of Kate’s books into the railway-carriage, “now I have done something to make amends for my fault, I trust. One thing more I can do. When you get home you need not spare me. You can put it all on my shoulders, Miss Bonamy.”
“Thank you,” Kate answered demurely.
“You are going to do so, I see,” he said, laughing. “I fear my character will reach Claversham before me.”
“I do not think we shall spread it very widely,” she answered in a peculiar tone, which he naturally misunderstood.
The train was already in motion then, and he shook hands with her as he walked beside it. “Goodbye,” he said. And then he added in a lower tone—he was such a very young rector—“I hope to see very much of you in the future, Miss Bonamy.”