Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/219

Rh Lettie looked impatiently for the end. George swept his bare arms across the table, and the scattered little flowers fell broken to the ground.

“Oh—what a shame!” exclaimed Lettie.

“What?” said he, looking round. “Your flowers? Do you feel sorry for them?—you’re too tender hearted; isn’t she, Cyril?”

“Always was—for dumb animals, and things,” said I.

“Don’t you wish you was a little dumb animal, Georgie?” said Alice.

He smiled, putting away the chess-men.

“Shall we go, dear?” said Lettie to Leslie.

“If you are ready,” he replied, rising with alacrity.

“I am tired,” she said plaintively.

He attended to her with little tender solicitations.

“Have we walked too far?” he asked.

“No, it’s not that. No—it’s the snowdrops, and the man, and the children—and everything. I feel just a bit exhausted.”

She kissed Alice, and Emily, and the mother.

“Good-night, Alice,” she said. “It’s not altogether my fault we’re strangers. You know—really—I’m just the same—really. Only you imagine, and then what can I do?”

She said farewell to George, and looked at him through a quiver of suppressed tears.

George was somewhat flushed with triumph over Lettie: She had gone home with tears shaken from her eyes unknown to her lover; at the farm George laughed with Alice.

We escorted Alice home to Eberwich—“Like a