The Outspan Part 11

Nairn twitched visibly, but offered no explanation, and there was another silence. Presently the girl observed genially:

"You remember, Mr Nairn, while we were driving along that night, you were telling us about the training of horses? You remember, don't you?"

"Yes," said Nairn grumpily.

"You remember," resumed the girl, smiling sweetly--"you remember telling us that you considered the various types of animals higher or lower according to their susceptibility to kindness and gentle treatment--that the horse, for instance, stands higher than the mule or the donkey.

Now," said she, turning to him with laughing eyes but earnest mien, "I wanted to ask you which of those two is the one upon which patience and kindness and good temper are most wasted."

"You mean, whether I am a mule or an a.s.s?"

Nairn looked round, vainly endeavouring not to smile.

"Oh dear, oh dear!" said Miss Kate, laughing and moving to the door; "I'm afraid the poor old head is very bad to-day! Here are the others.

I must go. Good-bye."

"_Did_ you mean that _I_--"

"Say good-bye at once, or I'll sit down again and refuse to leave."

"I won't! Tell me, did--"

"Good-bye, Ursa Major with the sore head, and don't ask questions."

The girl curtseyed to him in the doorway as she left, and Nairn turned his face to the wall again with a groan.

A girl knows when a man's eyes follow her about the room, and she knows why--long before the man does. But the man finds it out soon enough.

Nairn pushed away the books and papers. They had no charm for him, and, as he could not sleep, he fell presently to tracing the design of the wallpaper and counting how many varieties or bunches of flowers went to make up the general pattern. He detected small irregularities in the joinings, and they annoyed him. So he turned round and stared at the ceiling; but he had studied that before, and he knew which board contained the most knots, and how many boards had apparently been cut from the same log. There were two boards which were twins; so exactly did they match, they must have been parted by but one saw-cut; and he speculated if there could be any sort of intelligence in them that could be roused to wonder or grat.i.tude that they, cut in Norway from one stately old pine, should pa.s.s through many hands and yet find a resting-place side by side ten thousand miles away in the gold-fields of the Transvaal.

Nairn's eyelids drooped heavily. One sleepy chuckle escaped him at his own quaint conceit, as he wondered whether the ceiling boards considered the flooring boards beneath them, and if they ever put on side on that account; and the smile of lazy content remained long after he was fast asleep.

It was the scent of flowers that roused him. Violets! And he had not smelt them for twelve years!

Miss Kate was sitting there looking at him, and, but for the scent of the flowers and the slanting sunbeams, he might have thought she had never left.

"Does the big bear like flowers?"

He was too contented to do more than smile. "And he won't eat me now?"

"When Beauty picked the flowers, what did the Beast do?"

Kate looked up with a shade of alarm. She was not quite sure where a.n.a.logies might lead them--they get to mean so much.

"Well, well," she laughed, "who would have suspected you of a leaning towards fairy tales? Why don't you ask if I enjoyed my ride?"

"Well, did you?"

"Listen to him! Well, _did_ I? Oh," said Miss Kate, pus.h.i.+ng back her chair with a sigh of mock despair, "you'll _never_ learn! It is not in you to be ordinarily civil. Now listen, and I'll teach you; and now repeat after me: 'I hope--'"

"I hope--"

"No, no! You must hope with greater warmth. Say, 'I _hope_ you have enjoyed--'"

"I _hope_ you have enjoyed--"

"'Your ride _immensely_!'"

"Your ride _immensely_!"

"That's better. And 'I'm very glad indeed--'"

"And I'm very glad indeed--"

"'That you went out.'"

"No, I'm hanged if I'll say that!"

"Mister Nairn!"

"No; I don't care what you say! I won't say that! I'm not going to perjure myself."

"You must say it!"

"Not if I die for it!"

"You won't say it to oblige me?"

"N-no."

There was a curious pause. Kate looked down, saying softly:

"Well, if you won't do the first thing I have ever asked you, I suppose I'd better go."

Women, not excepting the very best, are often most unfair, and sometimes even mean. Why change in a breath from chaff to deadly earnest, and wring a man's heart out with half a look and a catch in the voice?

Nairn succ.u.mbed.

"No, don't go. I'll say it."

"Well?"

"But I've forgotten the words."

"No; you can't have forgotten so quickly. Say, 'I'm very glad indeed that you went out.'"

"I'm very glad indeed that--"

"Go on!"