"I ought to have walked with you that day," she said in a very low tone. The parrot opened his eyes and looked at them as though he were striving to catch his cue.

"Of course you ought." But as he said this he smiled and there was no offence in his voice. "I dare say you didn't guess how much I thought of it. And then I was a bear to you. I always am a bear when I am not pleased."

"Peas, peas, peas," said the parrot.

"I shall be a bear to that brute of a bird before long."

"What a very queer bird he is."

"He is a public nuisance,--and so is the old lady who brought him here." This was said quite in a whisper. "It is very odd, Miss Masters, but you are literally the only person in all Dillsborough in regard to whom I have any genuine feeling of old friendship."

"You must remember a great many."

"But I did not know any well enough. I was too young to have seen much of your father. But when I came back at that time you and I were always together."

"Gedder, gedder, gedder," said the parrot.

"If that bird goes on like that I'll speak to the guard," said Mr.

Morton with affected anger.

"Polly mustn't talk," said the old lady waking up.

"Tok, tok, tok, tok," screamed the parrot. Then the old lady threw a shawl over him and again went to sleep.

"If I behaved badly I beg your pardon," said Mary.

"That's just what I wanted to say to you, Miss Masters,--only a man never can do those things as well as a lady. I did behave badly, and I do beg your pardon. Of course I ought to have asked Mr. Twentyman to come with us. I know that he is a very good fellow."

"Indeed he is," said Mary Masters, with all the emphasis in her power. "Deedy is, deedy is, deedy is, deedy is," repeated the parrot in a very angry voice about a dozen times under his shawl, and while the old lady was remonstrating with her too talkative companion their tickets were taken and they ran into the Hinxton Station. "If the old lady is going on to Cheltenham we'll travel third cla.s.s before we'll sit in the same carriage again with that bird," said Morton laughing as he took Mary into the refreshment-room. But the old lady did not get into the same compartment as they started, and the last that was heard of the parrot at Hinxton was a quarrel between him and the guard as to certain railway privileges.

When they had got back into the railway carriage Morton was very anxious to ask whether she was in truth engaged to marry the young man as to whose good fellowship she and the parrot had spoken up so emphatically, but he hardly knew how to put the question. And were she to declare that she was engaged to him, what should he say then?

Would he not be bound to congratulate her? And yet it would be impossible that any word of such congratulation should pa.s.s his lips.

"You will stay a month at Cheltenham?" he said.

"Your aunt was kind enough to ask me for so long."

"I shall go back on Sat.u.r.day. If I were to stay longer I should feel myself to be in her way. And I have come to live a sort of hermit's life. I hardly know how to sit down and eat my dinner in company, and have no idea of seeing a human being before two o'clock."

"What do you do with yourself?"

"I rush in and out of the garden and spend my time between my books and my flowers and my tobacco pipes."

"Do you mean to live always like that?" she asked,--in perfect innocency.

"I think so. Sometimes I doubt whether it's wise."

"I don't think it wise at all," said Mary.

"Why not?"

"People should live together, I think."

"You mean that I ought to have a wife?"

"No;--I didn't mean that. Of course that must be just as you might come to like any one well enough. But a person need not shut himself up and be a hermit because he is not married. Lord Rufford is not married and he goes everywhere."

"He has money and property and is a man of pleasure."

"And your cousin, Mr. John Morton."

"He is essentially a man of business, which I never could have been.

And they say he is going to be married to that Miss Trefoil who has been staying there. Unfortunately I have never had anything that I need do in all my life, and therefore I have shut myself up as you call it. I wonder what your life will be." Mary blushed and said nothing. "If there were anything to tell I wish I knew it."

"There is nothing to tell."

"Nothing?"

She thought a moment before she answered him and then she said, "Nothing. What should I have to tell?" she added trying to laugh.

He remained for a few minutes silent, and then put his head out towards her as he spoke. "I was afraid that you might have to tell that you were engaged to marry Mr. Twentyman."

"I am not."

"Oh!--I am so glad to hear it."

"I don't know why you should be glad. If I had said I was, it would have been very uncivil if you hadn't declared yourself glad to hear that."

"Then I must have been uncivil for I couldn't have done it. Knowing how my aunt loves you, knowing what she thinks of you and what she would think of such a match, remembering myself what I do of you, I could not have congratulated you on your engagement to a man whom I think so much inferior to yourself in every respect. Now you know it all,--why I was angry at the bridge, why I was hardly civil to you at your father's house; and, to tell the truth, why I have been so anxious to be alone with you for half an hour. If you think it an offence that I should take so much interest in you, I will beg your pardon for that also."

"Oh, no!"

"I have never spoken to my aunt about it, but I do not think that she would have been contented to hear that you were to become the wife of Mr. Twentyman."

What answer she was to make to this or whether she was to make any she had not decided when they were interrupted by the reappearance of the old lady and the bird. She was declaring to the guard at the window, that as she had paid for a first-cla.s.s seat for her parrot she would get into any carriage she liked in which there were two empty seats. Her bird had been ill-treated by some scurrilous ill-conditioned travellers and she had therefore returned to the comparative kindness of her former companions. "They threatened to put him out of the window, sir," said the old woman to Morton as she was forcing her way in.

"Windersir, windersir," said the parrot.

"I hope he'll behave himself here, ma'am," said Morton.

"Heremam, heremam, heremam," said the parrot.

"Now go to bed like a good bird," said the old lady putting her shawl over the cage,--whereupon the parrot made a more diabolical noise than ever under the curtain.

Mary felt that there was no more to be said about Mr. Twentyman and her hopes and prospects, and for the moment she was glad to be left in peace. The old lady and the parrot continued their conversation till they had all arrived in Cheltenham;--and Mary as she sat alone thinking of it afterwards might perhaps feel a soft regret that Reginald Morton had been interrupted by the talkative animal.