Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/267

Rh 'To help you?'

'To land the last new Tauchnitz.'

She met the proposal as one whose fancy had kindled, while her cousin watched them as if they had suddenly improvised a drawing-room charade. 'A service of danger?'

'Under the cliff—when you see the lugger stand in!'

'Armed to the teeth?'

'Yes—but invisibly. Your old waterproof!'

'Mine is new. I'll take Susan's!'

This good lady, however, had her reserves. 'Mayn't one of them, all the same—here and there—have been sorry?'

Mr. Patten wondered. 'For the jobs he muffed?'

'For the wrong—as it was wrong—he did.'

'"One" of them?' She had gone too far, for the vicar suddenly looked as if he divined in the question a reference.

They became, however, as promptly unanimous in meeting this danger, as to which Miss Susan in particular showed an inspired presence of mind. 'Two of them!' she sweetly smiled. 'May not Amy and I?'

'Vicariously repent?' said Mr. Patten. 'That depends—for the true honour of Marr—on how you show it.'

'Oh, we shan't show it!' Miss Amy cried.

'Ah, then,' Mr. Patten returned, 'though atonements, to be efficient, are supposed to be public, you may do penance in secret as much as you please!'

'Well, I shall do it,' said Susan Frush.

Again, by something in her tone, the vicar's attention appeared to be caught. 'Have you then in view a particular form?'

'Of atonement?' She coloured now, glaring rather helplessly, in spite of herself, at her companion. 'Oh, if you're sincere you'll always find one.'

Amy came to her assistance. 'The way she often treats me has made her—though there's after all no harm in her—familiar with remorse. Mayn't we, at any rate,' the younger lady