Bulldog and Butterfly | Page 5

in a troubled voice. 'I respect him very highly, but as for marrying him, it's out of the question. I can't do it.'
'Well, well,' returned her mother, 'nobody's askin' you to do anything o' the sort. I'm trying to find your mind about him. It's high time 'twas made up one way or other. You've come to a marriageable age.'
'I'm very well as I am,' said Bertha, rather hastily. 'I'm not in a hurry to be married.'
'You've never been much like other gells,' said her mother, with a dry humorous twinkle which looked more masculine than feminine. 'But I reckon you'll be in about as much of a hurry as the rest on 'em be when the right man comes.'
At this moment a whistle of peculiar volume, mellowness, and flexibility was heard. The whistler was trilling 'Come lasses and lads' in tones as delightful as a blackbird's.
'Is this him?' said the old woman, turning upon her daughter.
Bertha blushed, and turned away. The mother laughed. A light footstep sounded on the echoing boards of the little bridge, and the human blackbird, marching gaily in time to his tune, flourished a walking-stick in salutation as he approached.
'Good-afternoon, Mrs. Fellowes,' cried the newcomer. 'Good-afternoon, Miss Fellowes.'
They both returned his salutation, and he stood before them smilingly, holding his stick lightly by the middle, and swinging it hither and thither, as if keeping time to an inward silent tune. His feet were planted a little apart, he carried his head well back, and his figure was very alert and lithe. He made great use of his lips in talking, and whatever he said seemed a little overdone in emphasis. His expression was eager, amiable, and sensitive, and it changed like the complexion of water in variable weather. He was a bit of a dandy in his way, too. His clothes showed his slim and elastic figure to the best advantage, and a bright-coloured neckerchief with loose flying ends helped out a certain air of festal rural opera which belonged to him.
'I passed Thistlewood on my way here,' he said, laughing brightly. 'He looked as cheerful as a frog. Did y' ever notice what a cheerful-looking thing a frog is?'
He made a face ludicrously like the creature he mentioned. The old woman laughed outright, and Bertha smiled, though somewhat unwillingly.
'I don't like to hear Mr. Thistlewood made game of, Mr. Protheroe,' she said a moment later.
'Don't you, Miss Fellowes?' asked Mr. Protheroe. 'Then it shan't be done in your presence again.'
'That means it may be done out of my presence, I suppose,' the girl said coldly.
'No, nor out of it,' said the young fellow, bowing with something of a flourish, 'if it displeases you.'
'Come in, Lane, my lad,' said the mother, genially. 'I've got the poultry to look after at this hour. Bertha 'll tek care of you till I come back again.'
Lane Protheroe bowed again with the same gay flourish, and recovering himself from the bow with an upward swing of the head, followed the women-folk into the wide kitchen as if he had been crossing the floor in a minuet. If these airs of his had been assumed they would have touched the ridiculous, but they were altogether natural to him; and what with them and his smiling, changeful, sympathetic ways, he was a prime favourite, and seemed to carry sunshine into all sorts of company.
When the mother had left the kitchen the girl seated herself considerably apart from the visitor, and taking up a book from a dresser beside her, began to turn over its pages, stopping now and again to read a line or two, and rather ostentatiously disregarding her companion. He sat in silence, regarding her with a grave face for a minute or thereabouts, and then, rising, crossed the room and placed himself beside her, bending over her, with one hand resting on the dresser. She did not look up in answer to this movement, but bent her head even a little more than before above the book.
'I'm glad to be left alone with you for a minute, Miss Fellowes,' he began gently, and with a faint tremor and hesitation in his voice, 'because I've something very special and particular to say to you.'
There he paused, and Bertha with a slight cough, which was a trifle too casual and unembarrassed to be real, said, 'Indeed, Mr. Protheroe?' and kept her eyes upon the book.
'They say a girl always knows,' he went on, 'and if that's true you know already what I want to say.'
He paused, but if he expected any help from her in the way either of assent or denial, he was disappointed. He stooped a little lower and touched her hand with a gentle timidity, but she at once withdrew it.
'You know I love you, Bertha? You