The Incomplete Amorist | Page 6

He asked idle questions: she
answered them with a conscientious tremulous truthfulness that showed
to him as the most finished art. And it seemed to him a very fortunate
accident that he should have found here, in this unlikely spot, so
accomplished a player at his favorite game. Yet it was the variety of his
game for which he cared least. He did not greatly relish a skilled
adversary. Betty told him nervously and in words ill-chosen everything
that he asked to know, but all the while the undercurrent of questions
rang strong within her--"When is he to teach me? Where? How?"--so
that when at last there was left but the bare fifteen minutes needed to
get one home in time for the midday dinner she said abruptly:
"And when shall I see you again?"
"You take the words out of my mouth," said he. And indeed she had.
"She has no finesse yet," he told himself. "She might have left that
move to me."
"The lessons, you know," said Betty, "and, and the picture, if you really
do want to do it."
"If I want to do it!--You know I want to do it. Yes. It's like the nursery
game. How, when and where? Well, as to the how--I can paint and you
can learn. The where--there's a circle of pines in the wood here. You
know it? A sort of giant fairy ring?"

She did know it.
"Now for the when--and that's the most important. I should like to paint
you in the early morning when the day is young and innocent and
beautiful--like--like--" He was careful to break off in a most natural
seeming embarrassment. "That's a bit thick, but she'll swallow it all
right. Gone down? Right!" he told himself.
"I could come out at six if you liked, or--or five," said Betty, humbly
anxious to do her part.
He was almost shocked. "My good child," he told her silently,
"someone really ought to teach you not to do all the running. You don't
give a man a chance."
"Then will you meet me here to-morrow at six?" he said. "You won't
disappoint me, will you?" he added tenderly.
"No," said downright Betty, "I'll be sure to come. But not to-morrow,"
she added with undisguised regret; "to-morrow's Sunday."
"Monday then," said he, "and good-bye."
"Good-bye, and--oh, I don't know how to thank you!"
"I'm very much mistaken if you don't," he said as he stood bareheaded,
watching the pink gown out of sight.
"Well, adventures to the adventurous! A clergyman's daughter, too! I
might have known it."
CHAPTER II.
THE IRRESISTIBLE.
Betty had to run all the way home, and then she was late for dinner. Her
step-father's dry face and dusty clothes, the solid comfort of the
mahogany furnished dining room, the warm wet scent of mutton,--these

seemed needed to wake her from what was, when she had awakened, a
dream--the open sky, the sweet air of the May fields and Him. Already
the stranger was Him to Betty. But, then, she did not know his name.
She slipped into her place at the foot of the long white dining table, a
table built to serve a dozen guests, and where no guests ever sat, save
rarely a curate or two, and more rarely even, an aunt.
"You are late again, Lizzie," said her step-father.
"Yes, Father," said she, trying to hide her hands and the fact that she
had not had time to wash them. A long streak of burnt sienna marked
one finger, and her nails had little slices of various colours in them. Her
paint-box was always hard to open.
Usually Mr. Underwood saw nothing. But when he saw anything he
saw everything. His eye was caught by the green smudge on her pink
sleeve.
"I wish you would contrive to keep yourself clean, or else wear a
pinafore," he said.
Betty flushed scarlet.
"I'm very sorry," she said, "but it's only water colour. It will wash out."
"You are nearly twenty, are you not?" the Vicar inquired with the dry
smile that always infuriated his step-daughter. How was she to know
that it was the only smile he knew, and that smiles of any sort had long
grown difficult to him?
"Eighteen," she said.
"It is almost time you began to think about being a lady."
This was badinage. No failures had taught the Reverend Cecil that his
step-daughter had an ideal of him in which badinage had no place. She
merely supposed that he wished to be disagreeable.

She kept a mutinous silence. The old man sighed. It is one's duty to
correct the faults of one's child, but it is not pleasant. The Reverend
Cecil had not the habit of shirking any duty because he happened to
dislike it.
The mutton was