Part 20 (1/2)
”If you mend the harness at once, Joe, uncle Julius need not be bothered about it. As it happened, there is no harm done, and I won't mention the matter.”
”Thank you, miss,” he said eagerly. ”I'll mend it at once.”
Now that I had that piece of business so luckily disposed of, I did not feel the least nervous about meeting grannie. I took the mail in my arms and entered the dining-room, chirping pleasantly:
”Grannie, I'm such a good mail-boy. I have heaps of letters, and did not forget one of your commissions.”
”I don't want to hear that now,” she said, drawing her dear old mouth into a straight line, which told me I was not going to palm things off as easily as I thought. ”I want a reason for your conduct this afternoon.”
”Explain what, grannie?” I inquired.
”None of that pretence! Not only have you been most outrageously insulting to Mr Hawden when I sent him with you, but you also deliberately and wilfully disobeyed me.”
Uncle Julius listened attentively, and Hawden looked at me with such a leer of triumph that my fingers tingled to smack his cars. Turning to my grandmother, I said distinctly and cuttingly:
”Grannie, I did not intentionally disobey you. Disobedience never entered my head. I hate that thing. His presence was detestable to me.
When he got out at the gate I could not resist the impulse to drive off and leave him there. He looked such a complete jackdaw that you would have laughed yourself to see him.”
”Dear, oh dear! You wicked hussy, what will become of you!” And grannie shook her head, trying to look stern, and hiding a smile in her serviette.
”Your manners are not improving, Sybylla. I fear you must be incorrigible,” said aunt Helen.
When uncle Jay-Jay heard the whole particulars of the affair, he lay back in his chair and laughed fit to kill himself.
”You ought to be ashamed to always encourage her in her tomboyish ways, Julius. It grieves me to see she makes no effort to acquire a ladylike demeanour,” said grannie.
Mr Hawden had come off second-best, so he arose from his half-finished meal and stamped out, banging the door after him, and muttering something about ”a disgustingly spoilt and petted tomboy”, ”a hideous barbarian”, and so forth.
Uncle Jay-Jay related that story to everyone, dwelling with great delight upon the fact that Frank Hawden was forced to walk four miles in the heat and dust.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As Short as I Wish had been the Majority of Sermons to which I have been Forced to give Ear
When alone I confessed to aunt Helen that Harold had accompanied me to within a short distance of home. She did not smile as usual, but looked very grave, and, drawing me in front of her, said:
”Sybylla, do you know what you are doing? Do you love Harry Beecham? Do you mean to marry him?”
”Aunt Helen, what a question to ask! I never dreamt of such a thing. He has never spoken a word of love to me. Marriage! I am sure he does not for an instant think of me in that light. I'm not seventeen.”
”Yes, you are young, but some people's age cannot be reckoned by years.
I am glad to see you have developed a certain amount of half-real and half-a.s.sumed youthfulness lately, but when the novelty of your present life wears away, your old mature nature will be there, so it is of no use feigning childishness. Harold Beecham is not given to speech--action with him is the same thing. Can you look at me straight, Sybylla, and say that Harold has not extended you something more than common politeness?”
Had aunt Helen put that question to me a day before, I would have blushed and felt guilty. But today not so. The words of the jackeroo the night before had struck home. ”A hideous barbarian”, he had called me, and it seemed to me he had spoken the truth. My life had been so pleasant lately that I had overlooked this fact, but now it returned to sting with redoubled bitterness. I had no lovable qualities to win for me the love of my fellows, which I so much desired.