"This is Adèle, our little French guest, Reuben."
The lad throws a quick, searching glance upon her, but is abashed by the look of half-confidence and half-merriment that he sees twinkling in her eye. The boy's awkwardness seems to infect her, too, for a moment.
"I should think, Reuben, you would welcome Adèle to the parsonage," said the spinster.
And Reuben, glancing again from under his brow, sidles along the table, with far less of ease than he had worn when he came whistling through the hall,--sidles nearer and nearer, till she, with a coy approach that seems to be full of doubt, meets him with a little furtive hand-shake. Then he, retiring a step, leans with one elbow on the friendly table, eying her curiously, and more boldly when he discovers that her look is downcast, and that she seems to be warming her feet at the blaze.
Miss Johns has watched narrowly this approach of her two _protégés_, with an interest quite uncommon to her; and now, with a policy that would have honored a more adroit tactician, she slips quietly from the room.
Reuben feels freer at this, knowing that the gray eye is not upon the watch; Adèle too, perhaps; at any rate, she lifts her face with a look that invites Reuben to speech.
"I should like to sail in a ship," said Reuben; "did you like it?"
"Not very much," said Adèle, "the deck was so slippery, and the waves were so high, oh, so high!"--and the little maid makes an explanatory gesture with her two hands, the like of which for grace and expressiveness Reuben had certainly never seen in any girl of Ashfield. His eyes twinkled at it.
"Because you know," said Reuben, consolingly, "if the ship had sunk, you could have come on shore in the small boats." He saw a merry laugh of wonderment threatening in her face, and continued authoritatively, "Nat Boody has been in a sloop, and he says they always carry small boats to pick up people when the big ships go down."
Adèle laughed outright. "But how would they carry the bread, and the stove, and the water, and the anchor, and all the things? Besides, the great waves would knock a small boat in pieces."
Reuben felt a humiliating sense of being no match for the little stranger on sea topics, so he changed the theme.