"Crying, Hetty? That will never do," he said.
Hetty glanced at him covertly. His face was compassionate, but there was rather toleration than concern in it, and she pulled her hand away from him.
"I wasn't--at least, not exactly," she said. "And if I was, it was the weather--and why don't you go away?"
Ingleby smiled again, in a manner which while kind enough had yet a lack of comprehension in it that made her still angrier.
"People don't generally cry about the weather," he said.
"Well," said the girl sharply, "some of them say things they shouldn't. I heard you--in a crowded car, too."
She stopped abruptly, as she remembered the scanty privacy of the Colonist train, and that she was supposed to have been asleep about the time Ingleby had allowed his temper to get the better of him. He, however, only laughed.
"Hetty," he said, "what is the matter? I always thought you brave, and I have almost a right to know."
"I think you have," and there was a little flash in Hetty's eyes. "It was you who brought us here, and this is a horrible country. It frightens me."
Ingleby was a trifle perplexed, and showed it. He had known Hetty Leger for four or five years, and had never seen her in a mood of the kind before. It also occurred to him, as it did every now and then, that, although she was not to be compared with Miss Coulthurst, Hetty was in her own way beautiful. Just then a pretty plump arm showed beneath the unfastened sleeve of the thin blouse, and the somewhat dusty hair with the tint of pale gold in it, lying low on the white forehead, matched the soft blue eyes, though there was a hint of more character than is usually associated with her type in Hetty's white and pink face. Ingleby noticed all this with impersonal appreciation, as something which did not greatly concern him.
"Well," he said, "I'm sorry, and by no means sure I'm very much pleased with the country myself; but I don't quite see what else I could have done in the circumstances. Still, it hurts me to see you unhappy."
Hetty turned to him impulsively. "Never mind me. I'm an ungrateful little--beast. That's the fact, and you needn't try to say anything nice--I know I am. If it hadn't been for you Tom would have been in prison now."