Country homes -- Fiction; Orphans -- Fiction; Siblings -- Fiction
"It's only--" Sally hesitated, then she went through with it, speaking
hurriedly: "I don't want you to bother about me--doing things for
me--except as you do them for us all. You--you--are getting--"
"Well, what am I getting? Out with it!"
"To seem--not like my old friend Jarvis Burnside. And--I'd rather have
him back."
It was certainly out now. Jarvis drove on up the hill steadily, without
any further questioning. It was precisely like Sally thus bravely to have
shown him where he stood. It was a position clearly defined; he had stood
on it so long that he ought surely to be able easily to go back to it.
But he had driven to the top of the hill and on for two miles down the
road, had taken the turn to the left and pursued that road for another
mile, so that he was nearly at his destination, before he spoke. When at
last he did speak it was only to say, very quietly and cheerfully--at
least, so it sounded:
"All right, Sally."
Then he turned in at an open gate, and in less than five minutes,
with the hay-fork and tackle and ropes at their feet, he was turning
out again.
The drive back was rather a silent one. Jarvis spoke often, and Sally
replied, but it was about things to be seen along the wayside, or of the
plans for the day. The trip was made rather faster than it had been
done in coming, and the pace was excuse enough for there being no
prolonged conversation on any subject. Jarvis was now an expert driver
and by no means an over-cautious one, though he took no risks that he
would have called by that name, when he was not alone. More than once
his passenger held her breath, but realized afterward that she had been
in no real danger. Then they were at home, and Sally was saying, "Thank
you very much," as she jumped out, quite as if she had eagerly requested
to be taken.
"You are entirely welcome," was his response, in such an odd tone that
she looked round at him. He was smiling, but not at her--at the driveway
before him, and she could not help noting that he did not appear to be at
all crushed by anything that had occurred that morning. It struck her
that he had never seemed a stronger or more attractive figure than he
looked at this moment, sitting at the wheel with the bright July sunlight
touching his brown cheek and clean-cut profile; his head, with its heavy
crop of dark hair, bare and breeze-tossed; his powerful engine throbbing
before him. Suddenly she wanted to say: "You don't mind, do you?" with a
queer little feeling that he didn't mind quite enough! But the car was
already off, and she went on into the house with a sense of not feeling
quite so relieved as might have been expected at having brought about
something she had been wishing for some time to accomplish, but hadn't
known just how.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account