"Indeed!" said Winterborne, with mock awe. "Suppose you talk over my
head a little longer, Miss Grace Melbury?"
"Oh, I didn't mean it!" she said, repentantly, looking into his eyes.
"And as for myself, I hate French books. And I love dear old Hintock,
AND THE PEOPLE IN IT, fifty times better than all the Continent. But
the scheme; I think it an enchanting notion, don't you, Giles?"
"It is well enough in one sense, but it will take yon away," said he,
mollified.
"Only for a short time. We should return in May."
"Well, Miss Melbury, it is a question for your father."
Winterborne walked with her nearly to her house. He had awaited her
coming, mainly with the view of mentioning to her his proposal to have
a Christmas party; but homely Christmas gatherings in the venerable and
jovial Hintock style seemed so primitive and uncouth beside the lofty
matters of her converse and thought that he refrained.
As soon as she was gone he turned back towards the scene of his
planting, and could not help saying to himself as he walked, that this
engagement of his was a very unpromising business. Her outing to-day
had not improved it. A woman who could go to Hintock House and be
friendly with its mistress, enter into the views of its mistress, talk
like her, and dress not much unlike her, why, she would hardly be
contented with him, a yeoman, now immersed in tree-planting, even
though he planted them well. "And yet she's a true-hearted girl," he
said, thinking of her words about Hintock. "I must bring matters to a
point, and there's an end of it."
When he reached the plantation he found that Marty had come back, and
dismissing Creedle, he went on planting silently with the girl as
before.
"Suppose, Marty," he said, after a while, looking at her extended arm,
upon which old scratches from briers showed themselves purple in the
cold wind--"suppose you know a person, and want to bring that person to
a good understanding with you, do you think a Christmas party of some
sort is a warming-up thing, and likely to be useful in hastening on the
matter?"
"Is there to be dancing?"
"There might be, certainly."
"Will He dance with She?"
"Well, yes."
"Then it might bring things to a head, one way or the other; I won't be
the one to say which."
"It shall be done," said Winterborne, not to her, though he spoke the
words quite loudly. And as the day was nearly ended, he added, "Here,
Marty, I'll send up a man to plant the rest to-morrow. I've other
things to think of just now."