“I didn’t mean to be uncivil,” stammered Isabel.
“But you meant to be true?”
“I meant to say what I felt about Christmas Day.” Then she paused a moment. “If I have offended you, I beg your pardon.”
He looked at her and saw that her eyes were full of tears, and his heart was at once softened towards her. Should he say a word to her, to let her know that there was—or, at any rate, that henceforth there should be no offence? But it occurred to him that if he did so, that word would mean so much, and would lead perhaps to the saying of other words, which ought not to be shown without forethought. And now, too, they were within the parsonage gate, and there was no time for speaking. “You will go down again after lunch?” he asked.
“I don’t know;—not if I can help it. Here’s papa.” She had begged his pardon—had humbled herself before him. And he had not said a word in acknowledgment of the grace she had done him. She almost thought that she did dislike him—really dislike him. Of course he had known what she meant, and he had chosen to misunderstand her and to take her, as it were, at an advantage. In her difficulty she had abjectly apologized to him, and he had not even deigned to express himself as satisfied with what she had done. She had known him to be conceited and masterful; but that, she had thought, she could forgive, believing it to be the common way with men—imagining, perhaps, that a man was only the more worthy of love on account of such fault; but now she found that he was ungenerous also, and deficient in that chivalry without which a man can hardly appear at advantage in a woman’s eyes. She went on into the house, merely touching her father’s arm, as she passed him, and hurried up to her own room. “Is there anything wrong with Isabel?” asked Mr. Lownd.
“She has worked too hard, I think, and is tired,” said Maurice.
Within ten minutes they were all assembled in the dining-room, and Mabel was loud in her narrative of the doings of the morning. Barty Crossgrain and David Drum had both declared the sounding-board to be so old that it mustn’t even be touched, and she was greatly afraid that it would tumble down some day and “squash papa” in the pulpit. The rector ridiculed the idea of any such disaster; and then there came a full description of the morning’s scene, and of Barty’s fears lest Isabel should “brek her banes.” “His own wig was almost off,” said Mabel, “and he gave Isabel such a lug by the leg that she very nearly had to jump into his arms.”
“I didn’t do anything of the kind,” said Isabel.
“You had better leave the sounding-board alone,” said the parson.
“We have left it alone, papa,” said Isabel, with great dignity. “There are some other things that can’t be done this year.” For Isabel was becoming tired of her task, and would not have returned to the church at all could she have avoided it.
“What other things?” demanded Mabel, who was as enthusiastic as ever. “We can finish all the rest. Why shouldn’t we finish it? We are ever so much more forward than we were last year, when David and Barty went to dinner. We’ve finished the Granby-Moor pew, and we never used to get to that till after luncheon.” But Mabel on this occasion had all the enthusiasm to herself. The two farmer’s daughters, who had been brought up to the parsonage as usual, never on such occasions uttered a word. Mrs. Lownd had completed her part of the work; Maurice could not trust himself to speak on the subject; and Isabel was dumb. Luncheon, however, was soon over, and something must be done. The four girls of course returned to their labours, but Maurice did not go with them, nor did he make any excuse for not doing so.
“I shall walk over to Hundlewick before dinner,” he said, as soon as they were all moving. The rector suggested that he would hardly be back in time. “Oh, yes; ten miles—two hours and a half; and I shall have two hours there besides. I must see what they are doing with our own church, and how they mean to keep Christmas there. I’m not quite sure that I shan’t go over there again tomorrow.” Even Mabel felt that there was something wrong, and said not a word in opposition to this wicked desertion.
He did walk to Hundlewick and back again, and when at Hundlewick he visited the church, though the church was a mile beyond his own farm. And he added something to the store provided for the beef and pudding of those who lived upon his own land; but of this he said nothing on his return to Kirkby Cliffe. He walked his dozen miles, and saw what was being done about the place, and visited the cottages of some who knew him, and yet was back at the parsonage in time for dinner. And during his walk he turned many things over in his thoughts, and endeavoured to make up his mind on one or two points. Isabel had never looked so pretty as when she jumped down into the pulpit, unless it was when she was begging his pardon for her want of courtesy to him. And though she had been, as he described it to himself, “rather down upon him,” in regard to what he had said of Christmas, did he not like her the better for having an opinion of her own? And then, as he had stood for a few minutes leaning on his own gate, and looking at his own house at Hundlewick, it had occurred to him that he could hardly live there without a companion. After that he had walked back again, and was dressed for dinner, and in the
