“Late as usual, Sam,” said the girl, sinking into a chair. Then she caught sight of Hardy, who was standing by the door.
“It's a long time since you and I met, Miss Nugent,” he said, bowing.
“Yes, miss,” interposed Mr. Wilks, anxious to explain his position. “He called in to see me; quite a surprise to me it was. I 'ardly knowed him.”
“The last time we three met,” said Hardy, who to his host's discomfort had resumed his chair, “Wilks was thrashing me and you were urging him on.”
Kate Nugent eyed him carefully. It was preposterous that this young man should take advantage of a boy and girl acquaintance of eleven years before--and such an acquaintance!--in this manner. Her eyes expressed a little surprise, not unmixed with hauteur, but Hardy was too pleased to have them turned in his direction at all to quarrel with their expression.
“You were a bit of a trial in them days,” said Mr. Wilks, shaking his head. “If I live to be ninety I shall never forget seeing Miss Kate capsized the way she was. The way she----”
“How is your cold?” inquired Miss Nugent, hastily.
“Miss Nugent has forgotten and forgiven all that long ago,” said Hardy.
“Quite,” assented the girl, coldly; “one cannot remember all the boys and girls one knew as a child.”
“Certainly not,” said Hardy. “I find that many have slipped from my own memory, but I have a most vivid recollection of you.”
Miss Nugent looked at him again, and an idea, strange and incredible, dawned slowly upon her. Childish impressions are lasting, and Jem Hardy had remained in her mind as a sort of youthful ogre. He sat before her now a frank, determined-looking young Englishman, in whose honest eyes admiration of herself could not be concealed. Indignation and surprise struggled for supremacy.
“It's odd,” remarked Mr. Wilks, who had a happy knack at times of saying the wrong thing, “it's odd you should 'ave 'appened to come just at the same time as Miss Kate did.”
“It's my good fortune,” said Hardy, with a slight bow. Then he cocked a malignant eye at the innocent Mr. Wilks, and wondered at what age men discarded the useless habit of blushing. Opposite him sat Miss Nugent, calmly observant, the slightest suggestion of disdain in her expression. Framed in the queer, high-backed old chair which had belonged to Mr. Wilks's grandfather, she made a picture at which Jem Hardy continued to gaze with respectful ardour. A hopeless sense of self-depreciation possessed him, but the idea that Murchison should aspire to so much goodness and beauty made him almost despair of his sex. His reverie was broken by the voice of Mr. Wilks.