'Yes, Radie, you see I've found you out;' and his eye wandered, still smiling oddly, over the front of her quaint habitation.
'Oh, very well. No life like a gardener's--early hours, work, air, and plenty of quiet.' And the young lady laughed.
'"The Happy Valley," _I_ call it. Don't you remember "Rasselas?"'
'No,' he said, looking round him; 'I don't think I was ever there.'
'You horrid dunce!--it's a book, but a stupid one--so no matter,' laughed Miss Rachel, giving him a little slap on the shoulder with her slender fingers.
His reading, you see, lay more in circulating library lore, and he was not deep in Johnson--as few of us would be, I'm afraid, if it were not for Boswell.
'It's a confounded deal more like the "Valley of the Shadow of Death," in "Pilgrim's Progress"--you remember--that old Tamar used to read to us in the nursery,' replied Master Stanley, who had never enjoyed being quizzed by his sister, not being blessed with a remarkably sweet temper.
'If you don't like my scenery, come in, Stanley, and admire my decorations. You must tell me all the news, and I'll show you my house, and amaze you with my housekeeping. Dear me, how long it is since I've seen you.'
So she led him in by the arm to her tiny drawing-room; and he laid his hat and stick, and gray paletot, on her little marquetrie-table, and sat down, and looked languidly about him, with a sly smile, like a man amused.
'Aren't you afraid of being robbed and murdered, Radie?' he said, leaning forward to smell at the pretty bouquet in the little glass, and turning it listlessly round. 'There are lots of those burglar fellows going about, you know.'
'Thank you, dear, for reminding me. But, somehow, I'm not the least afraid. There hasn't been a robbery in this neighbourhood, I believe, for eight hundred years. The people never think of shutting their doors here in summer time till they are going to bed, and then only for form's sake; and, beside, there's nothing to rob, and I really don't much mind being murdered.'
He looked round, and smiled on, as before, like a man contemptuously amused, but sleepily withal.
'I like it,' she said quietly, also with a glance round her homely drawing-room.
'What do you call this, your boudoir or parlour?'