“I did,” said Daintry, speaking for both of them.
“And you do not now?”
The child reddened, and rubbed herself shyly against Kate’s chair. “Well, not so much!” she murmured, Jack’s eyes upon her. “He is too big a swell for us.”
“Oh, that is it, is it?” Jack said contemptuously.
He pressed it no farther, and appeared to have forgotten the subject; but presently, when he was alone with Kate, he recurred to it. “So, Lindo has been putting on airs, has he?” he observed. “Yet, I thought when Daintry wrote to me, after you left us, that she seemed to like him.”
“He was very kind and pleasant to us on our journey,” Kate answered, compelling herself to speak with indifference. “But—well, you know, my father and he have not got on well; so, of course, we have seen little of him lately.”
“Oh, that is all, is it?” Jack answered, moving restlessly in his chair.
“That is all,” said Kate quietly.
This seemed to satisfy Jack, for at tea he surprised her—and, for Daintry, she fairly leapt in her seat—by calmly announcing that he proposed to call on the rector in the course of the evening. “You have no objection, sir, I hope,” he said, coolly looking across at his host. “He has been a friend of mine for years, and though I hear you and he are at odds at present, it seems to me that that need not make mischief between us.”
“N—no,” said Mr. Bonamy slowly. “I do not see why it should.” Nevertheless, he was greatly astonished. He had heard that Jack and Mr. Lindo were acquainted, but had thought nothing of it. It is possible that the discovery of this friendship existing between the two led him to take new views of the rector. He continued, “I dare say in private he is not an objectionable man.”