"Oh, I hate both study and retirement, Mrs. Delane."
"Well, I shall tell people that--may I? Now, when I was at the Cransfords' yesterday,--he's our Lord Lieutenant, you know,--they were wondering whether they might call."
"From the Mayor upward--or, I suppose, Hedger would think I ought to say downward. We heard what fun you made of the poor man."
"Mr. Bannister will be more respectful to the Lord Lieutenant," said Janet, smiling.
"I suppose I disapprove of Lord Lieutenants," remarked Dale, with a laugh.
"You'll like Lady Cransford very much, and she'll like you. She gives so many balls that a bachelor household is a godsend."
"Bannister hardly depends on that for a welcome, my dear," said the Squire from the hearthrug.
"Now I declare, meeting him just as a friend like this, I'm always forgetting that he's a famous man."
"Please go on, Mrs. Delane. It's a capital exchange. But when are you going to give me the pleasure of seeing you at Littlehill?"
"I should like to visit your hermit's cell. But I'm so busy just now, and I dare say you are. When your guests forsake you, perhaps we will come and relieve your solitude. Janet, will you give us some music?"
Dale followed Janet to the piano, with a little frown on his brow. Why wouldn't she come now? Was it---- Janet's voice dispersed the frown and the reflection.
She sang a couple of songs, choosing them out of a book. As she turned over the leaves, Dale saw that some of the airs were set to words of his own writing. When Janet came to one of these, she turned the leaf hastily. The Squire had gone out, and Mrs. Delane, with the privilege of near relationship, was absorbed in a novel.
"I should like to hear you sing words of mine. See, here are two or three."
She glanced through them; then she shut the book and made as though to rise.
"I'm so sorry, Mr. Bannister; but I can't sing those words. I--I don't like them."
"I am sorry they are so bad," he answered in an offended tone.
"Oh, of course, so far as power and--and beauty goes, everything in the book is trash compared to them. But I can't sing them."
"I know you are angry. Please don't be angry, Mr. Bannister. I can't do what I think wrong, can I?"
"There, you wouldn't say that unless you were angry. People never do."