I found her hazel eyes upon me. They expressed something novel--a
surprise, as though she realized an unwonted relationship, and a
sympathetic pity. And still--something defensive.
When we got back to the cottage, I fell talking rather more freely
with her father about the nationalization of railways, and my spirits
and temper had so far mended at the realization that I could still
produce an effect upon Nettie, that I was even playful with Puss.
Mrs. Stuart judged from that that things were better with me than
they were, and began to beam mightily.
But Nettie remained thoughtful and said very little. She was lost
in perplexities I could not fathom, and presently she slipped away
from us and went upstairs.
Section 6
I was, of course, too footsore to walk back to Clayton, but I had
a shilling and a penny in my pocket for the train between Checkshill
and Two-Mile Stone, and that much of the distance I proposed to
do in the train. And when I got ready to go, Nettie amazed me by
waking up to the most remarkable solicitude for me. I must, she
said, go by the road. It was altogether too dark for the short way
to the lodge gates.
I pointed out that it was moonlight. "With the comet thrown in,"
said old Stuart.
"No," she insisted, "you MUST go by the road."
I still disputed.
She was standing near me. "To please ME," she urged, in a quick
undertone, and with a persuasive look that puzzled me. Even in the
moment I asked myself why should this please her?
I might have agreed had she not followed that up with, "The hollies
by the shrubbery are as dark as pitch. And there's the deer-hounds."
"I'm not afraid of the dark," said I. "Nor of the deer-hounds,
either."
"But those dogs! Supposing one was loose!"
That was a girl's argument, a girl who still had to understand that
fear is an overt argument only for her own sex. I thought too of
those grisly lank brutes straining at their chains and the chorus
they could make of a night when they heard belated footsteps along
the edge of the Killing Wood, and the thought banished my wish to
please her. Like most imaginative natures I was acutely capable of
dreads and retreats, and constantly occupied with their suppression
and concealment, and to refuse the short cut when it might appear
that I did it on account of half a dozen almost certainly chained
dogs was impossible.
So I set off in spite of her, feeling valiant and glad to be
so easily brave, but a l
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