“Have you had an infusion of Irish blood?” asked Ethel.
“I’m thinking of how inhospitable I was not to go down to the train.”
There was a knock at the kitchen door, and Minerva, who had been removing the soup plates, went out to open it.
A light-keyed, pleasant voice said to her,
“Can you tell me where the Vernons live?”
In through the kitchen came a light step, following Minerva’s heavy one, and as she opened the door into the dining room she said to us informally,
“I guess this is the man you was lookin’ for.”
“Oh, I didn’t know you had company,” said Sibthorp, setting down his grip and removing, or trying to remove his hat. His hand hit it and it fell to the floor, and when he stooped to pick it up he felt flustered, and put it on again, his face turning the colour of a peony.
“Mr. Sibthorp, you surely haven’t walked up? May I present you to Miss Paxton?”
“Certainly,” said the poor fellow. “That is, I did, and I’m happy to meet everybody.”
He had taken off his hat again, and I now found his hand and gave it a hearty shake.
“This is your house for the time being, Ellery, old man,” said I, “and Miss Paxton is one of the family, also. We call her Cherry, but it isn’t obligatory. Now hang your hat up in the hall, and I’ll show you where you can find a pitcher and basin, and nobody’s the least bit stiff in this house, so you can feel as happy as if you were by yourself.”
I led him out of the room, and by the time he had explained how he had not seen any hack, and had come up by a short-cut that a farmer told him about, he was feeling more in command of himself. It is really a tax on a man’s self possession to be shown through the kitchen and brought face to face with a strange and exceedingly pretty young woman, and I would not care to have anyone think that Sibthorp was one of those hopelessly diffident fellows, whose every contact with their fellow beings is agony.
When he came back to the table he went over and shook hands with Ethel, and sat down in his seat quite himself.
He was a good-looking fellow, reminding one a little of the pictures of Robert Schumann. His eyes were deep-set and his lips full, and if he had been born twenty years earlier his hair would have been long. The spirit of the times is against excessive hair.