The next day, when Mr. Royall came back to dinner, they faced each other in silence as usual. Verena's presence at the table was an excuse for their not talking, though her deafness would have permitted the freest interchange of confidences. But when the meal was over, and Mr. Royall rose from the table, he looked back at Charity, who had stayed to help the old woman clear away the dishes.
“I want to speak to you a minute,” he said; and she followed him across the passage, wondering.
He seated himself in his black horse-hair armchair, and she leaned against the window, indifferently. She was impatient to be gone to the library, to hunt for the book on North Dormer.
“See here,” he said, “why ain't you at the library the days you're supposed to be there?”
The question, breaking in on her mood of blissful abstraction, deprived her of speech, and she stared at him for a moment without answering.
“There's been some complaints made, it appears. Miss Hatchard sent for me this morning----”
Charity's smouldering resentment broke into a blaze. “I know! Orma Fry, and that toad of a Targatt girl and Ben Fry, like as not. He's going round with her. The low-down sneaks--I always knew they'd try to have me out! As if anybody ever came to the library, anyhow!”
“Somebody did yesterday, and you weren't there.”
“Yesterday?” she laughed at her happy recollection. “At what time wasn't I there yesterday, I'd like to know?”
Charity was silent. She had been so steeped in the dreamy remembrance of young Harney's visit that she had forgotten having deserted her post as soon as he had left the library.
“Miss Hatchard? Why, she ain't ever been near the place since she's been lame. She couldn't get up the steps if she tried.”
“She can be helped up, I guess. She was yesterday, anyhow, by the young fellow that's staying with her. He found you there, I understand, earlier in the afternoon; and he went back and told Miss Hatchard the books were in bad shape and needed attending to. She got excited, and had herself wheeled straight round; and when she got there the place was locked. So she sent for me, and told me about that, and about the other complaints. She claims you've neglected things, and that she's going to get a trained librarian.”