'Does he speak soft when he gives his orders?' said Kitty
Fisher. 'Or does he use his ordinary tone?'
'And oh, Miss Kennedy,' said little Molly Seaton, 'isn't it awfully nice to have such a handsome man tell you what to do?'
Now Hazel had been at her wits' end, feeling as if there was a trap for her, whatever she said or did not say. Pain and nervousness and almost fright had kept her still. But Molly's question brought things to such a climax, that she burst into an uncontrollable little laugh, and so answered everybody at once in the best manner possible. The sound of her laugh brought back the gentlemen too,—roaming off after their own ices,—and that would make a diversion.
But it came up again and again. It was to some too tempting a subject of fun; for others it had a deeper interest; it could not be suffered to lie still. Wych Hazel's ears could hardly get out of the sound of raillery, in all sorts of forms; from the soft insinuation of mischief in a mosquito's song, to the downright attacks of Kitty Fisher's teeth and Phinny Powder's claws. The air was full of it at last, to Wych Hazel's fancy; even the gentlemen, when they dared not speak openly, seemed in manner or tone to be commiserating or laughing at her.
'The diplomacy of truth!' said Mr. Kingsland to Mr. Falkirk, as Hazel passed near them with Mme. Lasalle. 'I must believe in it as a fixed fact,—where it exists! I should judge, by rough estimate, that Miss Kennedy had been asked about fifty- five trying questions this day; and in not one case, to my knowledge, has her answer even clipped the truth. She is a ninth wonder,—and from that on to the twenty-ninth! With all her innocence and ignorance—which would not comprehend nine- tenths of what might be said to her, I do not know the man who would dare say one word which she should not hear!'—With which somewhat unusual expression of his feelings Mr. Kingsland took himself away, leaving Prim and Mr. Falkirk alone on the verandah.
But it was a rather weary-faced young hostess that wrapped
Prim up, after that, and the lips that kissed her were hot.
Mr. Falkirk went down to his cottage and came back to breakfast the next morning, without having broached to his ward several subjects which stirred his thoughts. Finding himself in the fresh light of the new day, and in the security of the early morning, seated opposite Miss Hazel at the breakfast table, with the croquet confusion a thing of the past, he opened his mind.
'You had no wine yesterday, my dear, I observed.'
'No, sir. As I intended.'
'That is not according to custom—of other people.'