"Play," said the squire. "Why don't you begin?"
"Only that I'm thinking," said the spoiled child, tapping her foot petulantly. "Squire, I can't help saying it--I don't think you are quite fair to Frances."
"Eh, what?" said Squire Kane, in a voice of astonishment. "Highty-tighty, what next! Go on with your playing, miss."
"No, I won't! It isn't right of you to say she's not sympathetic."
"Not right of me! What next, I wonder! Let me tell you, Fluff, that although you're a charming little chit, you are a very saucy one."
"I don't care whether I'm saucy or not. You ought not to be unfair to Frances."
These rebellious speeches absolutely made the squire sit upright in his chair.
"Because she is sympathetic; she has the dearest, tenderest, most unselfish heart in the world. Oh, she's a darling! I love her!"
"Go on with your playing, Fluff," said the squire.
Two bright spots of surprise and anger burned on his cheeks, but there was also a reflective look on his face.
Fluff's eyes blazed. Her fair cheeks crimsoned, and she tried to thunder out a spirited battle march on her poor little guitar.
Arnold went quickly round to the back of the house. Although he had been absent for ten years, he still remembered the ways of the old place, and knew where to find the almost empty stables, and the coach-houses which no longer held conveyances.
"This place requires about four thousand pounds a year to keep it up properly," murmured Arnold to himself, "and from the looks of things I should say these dear good folks had not as many hundreds. I wonder if Frances will have me--I wonder if--" here he paused.
His heart was full of Frances this morning, but it was also full of a strange kind of peace and thanksgiving. He was not greatly anxious; he had a curious sensation of being rested all over. The fact was, he had gone through the most hair-breadth escapes, the most thrilling adventures, during the last ten years. He had escaped alive, at the most fearful odds. He had known hunger and thirst; he had been many, many times face to face with death. For more than half the time of his exile things had gone against him, and hard indeed had been his lot; then the tide had slowly turned, and after five more years Philip Arnold had been able to return to his native land, and had felt that it was allowed to him to think with hope of the girl he had always loved.