The Making of a Prig Part 4

"She thought you were awfully plucky and all that; she told me so. I was rather sick about it, of course; but, after all, it wasn't really worth minding because you were hit up so completely, you see."

"You are a singularly brutal pair of young people," observed Paul, glancing from one to the other. "I should like you to have the feel of my leg for half an hour. I fancy you would find yourselves 'hit up,'

as you are pleased to call it."

"Oh, but we're not a bit brutal," objected Katharine. "Ted never can help saying what he thinks at the moment,--that's how it is. It's because he shows all his feelings, don't you see?"

"You mustn't think Kitty is unfeeling because she doesn't say things,"

continued Ted. "She hates spoofing people, and she never says things she doesn't mean. She doesn't always say them when she does mean them; it's rather rough on a fellow sometimes, I think," he added feelingly.

The garden gate swung to, and they sprang to their feet simultaneously.

"Shall we scoot?" asked Ted, who seemed the more apprehensive of the two.

"I suppose so. Bother!" said Katharine regretfully. Ted was already gone, but she still lingered. The flying visit to Paul, instead of satisfying her curiosity about him, had only roused it still more; and she sauntered half absently towards him, without the least pretence of being in a hurry to go.

"Good-bye," she said, and put her hand into his. It was the first time she had shown any signs of shyness, and Paul began to like her better.

"Not good-bye," he said lightly. "You will come in again, won't you?

We shall have a good lot to tell each other."

"Shall we?"

"Well, don't you think so?" He dropped her hand and laughed. It seemed absurd that this child, who behaved generally like a charming tomboy, should persist in taking him seriously when he merely wanted to frivol.

"I'll come if it won't bore you," said Katharine shortly. She was wondering what there was to laugh at.

"Can you write a tolerable hand?" he asked.

"I write all daddy's things for him."

"Then we'll see if something can't be arranged," he began. He congratulated himself on his tact in helping to gratify her evident wish to see him again; but she baffled him once more by suddenly brightening up, and seizing upon his suggestion before he had half formed it.

"Could I be your secretary, do you mean? Why, of course I could. What fun! Aunt Esther? Oh, that's nothing. _I_ will manage Aunt Esther.

Good-bye."

She managed Aunt Esther very effectually at supper time, by calmly announcing her intention of becoming Mr. Wilton's secretary. And the Rector's sister, who was a curious compound of conventional dogma and worldly ignorance, and knew into the bargain that it was of no use to withstand her headstrong niece, gave in to her newest whim with a bad grace.

"Do as you like; I am no longer the head of the house, I suppose," she observed fretfully.

"Oh, yes, you are, Aunt Esther!" retorted Katharine with provoking cheerfulness. "_I_ only want to be Mr. Wilton's secretary."

Paul was not so elated as she had expected to find him, when she walked into his room in Miss Esther's wake on the following day, and told him that she had gained her point and was ready to become his secretary. Being such a responsive creature herself, she always expected every one else to share her emotions.

"Aren't you glad?" she asked him anxiously.

Not being able to explain that what he wanted was not so much a secretary as a pretty girl to amuse him, he said with his usual smile that he was delighted, and proceeded to dictate various uninteresting letters of a business-like character.

"So you live in the Temple," she observed, as she folded up a letter to his housekeeper. "Isn't it a gloriously romantic place to live in?"

"It is convenient," said Paul briefly. And that was all the conversation they had that day.

He wanted no letters written the next day, and she read the paper to him instead. But Miss Esther stayed in the room all the time, with her knitting, and there was no conversation that day either. On the third day, however, her aunt was wanted in the parish; and she deputed the Rector to take her place in the sick room. She might have known that he would forget all about it, directly she was gone; but Miss Esther always acted on the a.s.sumption that her brother possessed all the excellent qualities she wished him to have, and it never occurred to her that he would spend the afternoon in finishing his paper on the antiquities of the county.

"Aunt Esther has gone to see a poor woman who has lost her baby. I never can imagine why a woman who has lost her baby should be visited just because she is poor. Can you?" said Katharine, as she settled herself on the spare-room window-seat with her writing materials.

"No," said Paul, concealing his satisfaction that Miss Esther was of a different opinion. "You needn't bother about writing any letters to-day, thanks," he continued carelessly; "and I don't think I want to hear the paper, either."

"Don't you? oh!" said Katharine, looking disappointed. "Then there's nothing I can do for you?"

"Oh, yes. You can talk, if you will," said Paul, smiling. "Come and sit on the chair at the end of the bed, where you sat the first day you came in. I can see you, then."

"It is ever so much nicer to see the person you are talking to, isn't it?" observed Katharine, as she obeyed his suggestion.

"Much nicer," a.s.sented Paul, though it had never occurred to him to suggest that Miss Esther should occupy that particular chair. "Now then, talk, please!"

Katharine made a sign of dismay.

"I can't," she said. "You begin."

"Who is your favourite poet?" asked Paul solemnly. She disconcerted him by taking his question seriously, and he had to listen to her enthusiastic eulogies of several favourite poets, before he had an opportunity of explaining himself.

She detected him in the act of suppressing a yawn, and she stopped suddenly, in the middle of a sentence.

"I believe I am boring you dreadfully. Shall I go?" she asked. The colour had come into her cheeks, and her voice had a note of distress in it.

"I want you to tell me something, first," was his unexpected reply.

"Do you talk about poetry to young Morton?"

"Ted? Why, no, of course not. What an awful reflection! Ted isn't a bit poetic, not a little bit; and he would scoff like anything. I have never talked about the things I really like to anybody before; not even to daddy, much."

This was a little dangerous, and the tomboy daughter of the parson was not the kind of personality that was likely to make the danger fascinating. And Paul's first impulse was to wince at the unstudied frankness of her remark; but four days of seclusion had been exceedingly chastening, and the flattery that underlay her words was not unpleasing to him.

"Then what made you suppose _I_ cared about poetry, eh?" he asked deliberately.

"Why," said Katharine, staring at him, "you began it, don't you remember? I thought you wanted me to tell you what I thought."

"Yes, yes; I am aware of that. But don't you think we have talked enough about poetry for one day?" said Paul, half closing his eyes. He was already regretting his stupidity in expecting her to understand him.

"How awfully funny you are! First you say--"

"Yes," said Paul, as patiently as he could, "I know. Don't let us say any more about it. Supposing you were to talk to me now as you would talk to young Morton, for instance!"

Katharine shook her head doubtfully.

"I don't think I could. You're not like Ted; you don't like the same sort of things. You're not like me, either."

Paul smiled grimly.