This bold, fearless, almost insolent, boy’s face fascinated her. She seemed to be able to interpret the defiance that flashed in his eye, and to solve the problem which gathered on his half-mocking lips. She was half afraid, half enamoured of this old piece of canvas.
“Why are not you here now?” she muttered as she gazed at it. “You don’t look like the sort of boy to die. Should we be friends or enemies? Heigho! I shouldn’t care much which, if only you were here. Roger minor is a dear boy; but—you are—”
She didn’t say what he was, but worked late into the night with her copy.
At bedtime Jill came in radiant.
“He’s come back, Rosalind. Dear Mr Armstrong’s come back.”
“Oh!” said Rosalind shortly.
“Aren’t you glad? Oh, I am!”
“Why should I be glad? I don’t care two straws for all the Mr Armstrongs in the world. Go to bed, Jill, and don’t be a goose.”
Jill obeyed, a little discomfited, and was sound asleep long before the artist joined her. And long before she woke from her dreams next morning Rosalind was astir and abroad. She had resolved to pay an early call on old Hodder, if not to relieve his mind about the eviction, at least to take him some comfort in the shape of a little tea and sugar.
The old man was sitting outside the cottage, smoking and moaning to himself. He cheered up a bit at the sight of his visitor, still more at the sight of the tea. But it was a short-lived gleam of comfort, and he relapsed at the earliest opportunity into the doleful.