Mr. Erveng and papa walked across the park together, talking, and as we all followed behind,--Felix and Phil were out of sight,--who should come up beside me and lift his hat but that Hilliard! "May I walk with you part way home?" he asked, "I want to say something to you."
He speaks slowly, deliberately, and has a way of half-closing his eyes when he's talking, that gives him a sleepy look,--though he can open them very wide too, sometimes; and he's sallow, and has lots of freckles. Altogether, he isn't nearly as good-looking as our boys, or Murray Unsworth; still he has rather a nice face, and we've found out that he is just as gentle and nice as a girl to his mother,--I mean in waiting on her and doing things for her. But all the same, I don't know whether I like him or not; you see he's never had a sister, never been much with girls, and he's got such silly, prim ideas about them.
Well, to go back: when he asked that, I said, "Oh, yes, I suppose so;" but Jack says my tone wasn't very polite. I didn't mean to be impolite, but seeing him brought that horrid afternoon right to my mind, and I could just hear him giggle all over again; I assure you Phil and I'll not try that sort of thing again,--not if the Fetich never gets sold.
And evidently that was in his mind, too; for he said, "I want to apologise for being so rude as to laugh that day in my father's office,"--that's the way he talks, so formal, as if he were as old as papa,--"and for guarding--"
"We didn't think it was at all polite, I must say," I broke in.
But he went right on; that's another of his ways,--if one interrupts him fifty times in a remark, he'll listen, but make no reply until he's finished what he started out to say. Now I think that's provoking,--I wonder how he'd get on if he lived in our family!--and it makes the person that interrupts feel very small and nettled, too. "And for guarding you and your brother home, as if I doubted your word," he finished.
Well, now, do you know, I hadn't ever thought about that part,--his going along to guard us,--until he said this; and then, all at once, I felt very angry. "I think it _was_ very, _very_ rude of you," I said decidedly, "and I really wish you would go away and walk with your father, or by yourself--"