So the tutor turned back, and thought to himself that Miss Rosalind was evidently anxious that he should not be a witness to her introduction to her father’s friend.
Mr Ratman, brilliantly arranged in evening dress, and evidently already very much at home, was comfortably leaning against the mantelpiece in the hall as she descended. He did not wait for an introduction.
“I could tell Miss Oliphant anywhere,” said he, advancing, “by her likeness to her father. May I offer you my arm?”
“I am not at all like father,” said she quietly, scanning him as she spoke in a way which made even him uncomfortable, and then putting her hand on her father’s arm.
Thus repulsed, the visitor cheerfully offered his arm to Mrs Ingleton, congratulating her as he did so on the recovery of her son.
During the meal he was aware that the young lady’s eyes were completing their scrutiny, and although, being a bashful man, he did not venture too often to meet them with his own, he was conscious that the result was not altogether satisfactory to himself. His few attempts to talk to her fell flat, and in spite of the captain’s almost nervous attempts to improve the festivity of the occasion, the meal was an uncomfortable one.
“Where’s old Armstrong?” demanded Tom.
“With Roger,” replied Rosalind.
“Have you seen Armstrong?” inquired the boy of the visitor; “he’s a stunner, I can tell you. He can bend a poker double across his knee. You’ll like him awfully; and he plays the piano like one o’clock. He’s our tutor, you know—no end of a chap.”
Mr Ratman was fain to express a longing desire to make the acquaintance of so redoubtable a hero.