Nan looked at him more than once with reproachful sweetness. She thought they had lost caste in his eyes; but Phillis, who was shrewd and sharp-set in her wits, read him more truly. She knew--having already met a score of such--how addicted young Englishmen are to _mauvaise honte_, and how they will hide acute sensibilities under blunt and stolid exteriors; and there was a certain softness in Mr. Drummond's eye that belied his stiffness. Most likely he was very sorry for them, and did not know how to show it; and in this she was right.
Mr. Drummond was very sorry for them; but he was still more grieved for himself. The Oxford fellow had not long been a parish priest, and he could not at all understand the position in which he found himself,--taking tea with three elegant young dressmakers who talked the purest English and had decided views on tennis and horticulture. He had just been congratulating himself on securing such companionship for his sister and himself. Being rather classical-minded, he had been calling them the gray-eyed Graces, and one of them at least "a daughter of the gods,--divinely tall and most divinely fair;" for where had he seen anything to compare with Nan's bloom and charming figure? Dressmakers!--oh, if only Grace were at hand, that he might talk to her, and gain her opinion how he was to act in such case! Grace had the stiff-necked Drummond pride as well as he, and would hesitate long behind the barriers of conventionality. No wonder, with all these thoughts passing through his mind, that Nan, with her bright surface talk, found him a little vague.
It was quite a relief to all the party when Mattie gave the signal for departure and the bell was rung for Dorothy to show them out.
"Well, Nan, what do you think of our visitors?" asked Phillis, when the garden-door had clanged noisily after them, and she had treated Nan to the aforesaid hugs; "for you were so brave, darling, and actually took the wind out of my sails!" exclaimed the enthusiastic Phillis. "Miss Drummond is not so bad, after all, is she, in spite of her dowdiness and fussy ways?"
"No; she means well; and so does her brother. He is very nice, only his self-consciousness spoils him," returned Nan, in a calm, discursive tone, as though they were discussing ordinary visitors.