Meenie hesitated.
'I would like very well,' said she, 'but—but my mother and the lad have driven away to Tongue to fetch my father home—and it may be late before they are back——'
'The greater reason why you should come—why, to think of your sitting here alone! I will come along for you myself. And if you are afraid of having too much of the star-spangled banner, we'll get somebody else in who is not an American; I mean to ask Ronald if he will come in and spend the evening with us—or come in to dinner as well, if he has time——'
Now the moment she uttered these words she perceived the mistake she had made. Meenie all at once looked troubled, conscious, apprehensive—there was a touch of extra colour in her face: perhaps she was annoyed that she was betraying this embarrassment.
'I think some other night, if you please,' the girl said, in a low voice, and with her eyes cast down, 'some other night, when mamma is at home—I would like to ask her first.'
'Class distinctions,' said Miss Carry to herself, as she regarded this embarrassment with her observant eyes. 'Fancy class distinctions in a little community like this—in mid-winter too! Of course the Doctor's daughter must not sit down to dinner with Lord Ailine's head keeper.'
But she could not offer to leave Ronald out—that would but have added to the girl's confusion, whatever was the cause of it. She merely said lightly—
'Very well, then, some other evening you will take pity on us—and I hope before I go to Paris. And then I want you to let me come in now and again and have a cup of tea with you; and I get all the illustrated periodicals sent me from home—with the fashion-plates, you know.'
She rose.
'What a nice room—it is all your own, I suppose?'