Miss Lynde listened attentively enough, but she merely asked, when all was said: “And why was Alan vexed with you about him?”
“Well,” said the girl, falling back into her chair, “generally because this man's a jay, and particularly because he's been rather a baddish jay, I believe. He was suspended in his first year for something or other, and you know poor Alan's very particular! But Molly Enderby says Freddy Lancaster gives him the best of characters now.” Bessie pulled down her mouth, with an effect befitting the notion of repentance and atonement. Then she flashed out: “Perhaps he had been drinking when he got into trouble. Alan could never forgive him for that.”
“I think,” said her aunt, “it is to your brother's credit that he is anxious about your associations.”
“Oh, very much!” shouted Bessie, with a burst of laughter. “And as he isn't practically so, I ought to have been more patient with his theory. But when he began to scold me I lost my temper, and I gave him a few wholesome truths in the guise of taunts. That was what made him go away, I suppose.”
“But I don't really see,” her aunt pursued,—“what occasion he had to be angry with you in this instance.”
“Oh, I do!” said Bessie. “Mr. Durgin isn't one to inspire the casual beholder with the notion of his spiritual distinction. His face is so rude and strong, and he has such a primitive effect in his clothes, that you feel as if you were coming down the street with a prehistoric man that the barbers and tailors had put a 'fin de siecle' surface on.” At the mystification which appeared in her aunt's face the girl laughed again. “I should have been quite as anxious, if I had been in Alan's place, and I shall tell him so, sometime. If I had not been so interested in the situation I don't believe I could have kept my courage. Whenever I looked round, and found that prehistoric man at my elbow, it gave me the creeps, a little, as if he were really carrying me off to his cave. I shall try to express that to Alan.”
XXXI.
The ladies finished their tea, and the butler came and took the cups away. Miss Lynde remained silent in her chair at her end of the library-table, and by-and-by Bessie got a book and began to read. When her aunt woke up it was half past nine. “Was that Alan coming in?” she asked.
“I don't think he's been out,” said the girl. “It isn't late enough for him to come in—or early enough.”