‘I saw you look round!’ he exclaimed crossly. ‘What have I done to make you behave like that? Come, Miss Garland, be fair. ’Tis no use to turn your back upon me.’ As she did not turn he went on—‘Well, now, this is enough to provoke a saint. Now I tell you what, Miss Garland; here I’ll stay till you do turn round, if ’tis all the afternoon. You know my temper—what I say I mean.’ He seated himself firmly in the saddle, plucked some leaves from the hedge, and began humming a song, to show how absolutely indifferent he was to the flight of time.
‘What have you come for, that you are so anxious to see me?’ inquired Anne, when at last he had wearied her patience, rising and facing him with the added independence which came from a sense of the hedge between them.
‘There, I knew you would turn round!’ he said, his hot angry face invaded by a smile in which his teeth showed like white hemmed in by red at chess.
‘What do you want, Mr. Derriman?’ said she.
‘“What do you want, Mr. Derriman?”—now listen to that! Is that my encouragement?’
Anne bowed superciliously, and moved away.
‘I have just heard news that explains all that,’ said the giant, eyeing her movements with somnolent irascibility. ‘My uncle has been letting things out. He was here late last night, and he saw you.’
‘Indeed he didn’t,’ said Anne.
‘O, now! He saw Trumpet-major Loveday courting somebody like you in that garden walk; and when he came you ran indoors.’
‘It is not true, and I wish to hear no more.’