Page:The Private Life, Lord Beaupré, The Visits (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1893).djvu/139

Rh other side of the hill, a bit he should like to come back to, and he offered to show it to his friends. They were on the point of starting with him to look at it when Hugh Gosselin, taking out his watch, remembered the hour at which he had promised to be at the house again to give his mother, who wanted a little mild exercise, his arm. His sister at this said she would go back with him; but Bolton-Brown interposed an earnest inquiry. Mightn't she let Hugh keep his appointment and let him take her over the hill and bring her home?

"Happy thought—do that!" said Hugh, with a crudity that showed the girl how completely he had lost his English sense. He perceived, however, in an instant, that she was embarrassed, whereupon he went on: "My dear child, I've walked with girls so often in America that we really ought to let poor Brown walk with one in England." I know not if it was the effect of this plea or that of some further eloquence of their friend; at any rate, Mary Gosselin in the course of another minute had accepted the accident of Hugh's secession, had seen him