Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/486

478 Then I said I must go. They pressed me to stay.

“Oh, yes—do stop to dinner,” suddenly pleaded the child, smoothing her wild ravels of curls after having drawn off her hat. She asked me again and again, with much earnestness.

“But why?” I asked.

“So’s you can talk to us this afternoon—an’ so’s Dad won’t be so disagreeable,” she replied plaintively, poking the black spots on her muff.

Meg moved nearer to her daughter with a little gesture of compassion.

“But,” said I, “I promised a lady I would be back for lunch, so I must. You have some more visitors, you know.”

“Oh, well!” she complained, “They go in another room, and Dad doesn’t care about them.”

“But come!” said I.

“Well, he’s just as dis’greeable when Auntie Emily’s here—he is with her an’ all.”

“You are having your character given away,” said Meg brutally, turning to him.

I bade them good-bye. He did me the honour of coming with me to the door. We could neither of us find a word to say, though we were both moved. When at last I held his hand and was looking at him as I said “Good-bye,” he looked back at me for the first time during our meeting. His eyes were heavy and as he lifted them to me, seemed to recoil in an agony of shame.