“Oh, no. We shall have a good breeze:”
“I won’t put you to the trouble of getting a horse. I can go back perfectly well in the boat.”
“Well, that’s what I think,” he said cheerily.
She did not respond, and he could not be aware that any change had come over her mood. But when they were once more seated in the boat, and the sail was pulling in the fresh breeze, she turned to him with a scarcely concealed indignation. “Have you a fancy for experimenting upon people, Mr. Libby?”
“Experimenting? I? I don’t know in the least what you mean!”
“Why did you tell me that the operator was a woman?”
“Because the other operator is,” he answered.
“Oh!” she said, and fell blankly silent.
“There is a good deal of business there. They have to have two operators,” he explained, after a pause.
“Why, of course,” she murmured in deep humiliation. If he had suffered her to be silent as long as she would, she might have offered him some reparation; but he spoke.