Part 12 (1/2)
”We've quarrelled, then, have we?” he asked. His eyes were blue as the ice of glaciers in his brown face. His mouth and chin looked hard as iron; and never had Aline liked him half as well.
”Yes, we've quarrelled--if you insist,” she said.
”Then I must no longer intrude on you as your guest.”
”You'll go----”
”Naturally I'll go. I can't stay in your house--it's the same as your house--when you think I no longer deserve your friends.h.i.+p. On my side, I think you're unreasonable; but I may be wrong. Perhaps it's I who am unreasonable, and can't see it. Anyhow, I shall have to go.”
”I won't have Miss MacDonald in the house a minute after you leave,”
Aline said, almost threateningly.
”Why should you? Her packing won't take long, poor child.”
”You'll have to send her back to her grandmother now,” Aline warned him, in a brief flame of defiance.
”That's impossible. I wouldn't break my promise, even if Mrs. MacDonald didn't forbid her the house.”
”She can't very well go alone with you to Edinburgh in your car, I suppose?”
”She is going to Edinburgh in my car, but not alone with me. Won't you go too, Mrs. West, and let us forget all this nonsense?”
”You call it nonsense? That shows how little you understand me, how willing you are to spoil everything for the sake of this wretched girl!
Basil and I will simply go back to our original plan, and travel through Scotland together in a hired car.”
”Luncheon is served, madam,” Moore announced, at the turn of the path.
Luncheon--and the world in ruin!
”Mr. Somerled and Miss MacDonald will not be lunching,” said Aline icily.
Moore hid surprise by retiring in decorous haste.
”Good-bye, Mrs. West,” said Somerled.
He held out his hand, looking at her steadily, but she turned and rushed away from him, crying.
BOOK II
ACCORDING TO BARRIE
I
When the Great Surprise happened, Mr. Norman and I had just been having a very nice talk. I'd never expected to know a real author, and of course I wanted to talk about him, but he would talk about me instead.
He asked me questions in quite a different way from his sister's, though I can't put the difference into words. I can only feel it. I know his way made me want to answer him, and hers made me want to slap her. That is queer, because she was not rude, but soft and gentle.
Among other things that Mr. Norman teased me to tell, was about the silly stories which I've always been scribbling secretly ever since the time when I had to print because I hadn't learned to write. He said that he would like to see them, but I told him they were torn up, even the last one, which I stuffed into the chimney in my room before I ran away from Grandma's. Then he said I must write another, and he would help me.
I _was_ excited when he went on to say that people who took to writing like ducks to water when they were almost babies, without any one advising them, generally had real talent. This made me wild to begin writing again at once, and I envied him because he and Mrs. West had planned out a story all about their motor trip in Scotland. I thought it would be the greatest fun to write of things that were actually happening; but he explained that he wasn't going to bring in the real people or what they did or said, only the scenery and perhaps a few of the adventures, glorified a little. I told him that I should enjoy even more writing things exactly as they were in life; then he argued that if one did it in that way it wouldn't be a story, but a kind of diary.