"Thank you, no! I'm late and haven't time to
bother with you. It's against the rules, you know, for
us to receive visitors."
She stepped out into the path.
"But I'm not a caller. I'm just a neighbor. And I
owe you several calls, anyhow."
She laughed, but did not pause, and I followed a
pace behind her.
"I hope you don't think for a minute that I chased
a rabbit on your side of the fence just to meet you; do
you, Mr. Glenarm?"
"Be it far from me! I'm glad I came, though, for I
liked your music immensely. I'm in earnest; I think
it quite wonderful, Miss Armstrong."
She paid no heed to me.
"And I hope I may promise myself the pleasure of
hearing you often."
"You are positively flattering, Mr. Glenarm; but as
I'm going away-"
I felt my heart sink at the thought of her going
away. She was the only amusing person I had met at
Glenarm, and the idea of losing her gave a darker note
to the bleak landscape.
"That's really too bad! And just when we were getting
acquainted! And I was coming to church every
Sunday to hear you play and to pray for snow, so you'd
come over often to chase rabbits!"
This, I thought, softened her heart. At any rate her
tone changed.
"I don't play for services; they're afraid to let me
for fear I'd run comic-opera tunes into the Te Deum!"
"How shocking!"
"Do you know, Mr. Glenarm,"-her tone became confidential
and her pace slackened,-"we call you the
squire, at St. Agatha's, and the lord of the manor, and
names like that! All the girls are perfectly crazy about
you. They'd be wild if they thought I talked with you,
clandestinely,-is that the way you pronounce it?"
"Anything you say and any way you say it satisfies
me," I replied.
"That's ever so nice of you," she said, mockingly
again.
I felt foolish and guilty. She would probably get
roundly scolded if the grave Sisters learned of her talks
with me, and very likely I should win their hearty contempt.
But I did not turn back.
"I hope the reason you're leaving isn't-" I hesitated.
"Ill conduct? Oh, yes; I'm terribly wicked, Squire
Glenarm! They're sending me off."
"But I suppose they're awfully strict, the Sisters."
"They're hideous,-perfectly hideous."
"Where is your home?" I demanded. "Chicago, Indianapolis,
Cincinnati, perhaps?"
"Humph, you are dull! You ought to know from my
accent that I'm not from Chicago. And I hope I haven't
a Kentucky girl's air of waiting to be flattered to death.
And no Indianapolis girl would talk to a strange man at
the edge of a deep wood in the gray twilight of a winter
day,-that's from a book; and the Cincinnati girl is
without my élan, esprit,-whatever you please to call it.
She has more Teutonic repose,-more of Gretchen-of-the-Rhine-Valley
about her. Don't you adore French,
Squire Glenarm?" she concluded breathlessly, and with
no pause in her quick step.