“I want a pen for marking can you make me one, Uncle?” she
asked, popping her head in to be sure he was alone.
“Yes, my dear,” answered a voice so like the doctor’s that she
entered without delay.
But before she had taken three steps she stopped, looking rather
annoyed, for the head that rose from behind the tall desk was not
rough and gray, but brown and smooth, and Mac, not Uncle Alec,
sat there writing. Late experience had taught her that she had
nothing to fear from a t€te-…-t€te and, having with difficulty taken
a resolution, she did not like to fail of carrying it out.
“Don’t get up, I won’t trouble you if you are busy, there is no
hurry,” she said, not quite sure whether it were wiser to stay or run
away.
Mac settled the point by taking the pen out of her hand and
beginning to cut it, as quietly as Nicholas did on that “thrilling”
occasion. Perhaps he was thinking of that, for he smiled as he
asked, “Hard or soft??
Rose evidently had forgotten that the family of Squeers ever
existed, for she answered: “Hard, please,” in a voice to match. “I’m
glad to see you doing that,” she added, taking courage from his
composure and going as straight to her point as could be expected
of a woman.
“And I am very glad to do it.?
“I don’t mean making pens, but the romance I advised,” and she
touched the closely written page before him, looking as if she
would like to read it.
“That is my abstract on a lecture on the circulation of the blood,”
he answered, kindly turning it so that she could see. “I don’t write
romances I’m living one,” and he glanced up with the happy,
hopeful expression which always made her feel as if he was
heaping coals of fire on her head.
“I wish you wouldn’t look at me in that way it fidgets me,” she said
a little petulantly, for she had been out riding, and knew that she
did not present a “spiritual” appearance after the frosty air had
reddened nose as well as cheeks.
“I’ll try to remember. It does itself before I know it. Perhaps this
may mend matters.” And, taking out the blue glasses he sometimes
wore in the wind, he gravely put them on.
Rose could not help laughing, but his obedience only aggravated
her, for she knew he could observe her all the better behind his
ugly screen.
“No, it won’t they are not becoming, and I don’t want to look blue
when I do not feel so,” she said, finding it impossible to guess
what he would do next or to help enjoying his peculiarities.
“But you don’t to me, for in spite of the goggles everything is
rose-colored now.” And he pocketed the glasses without a murmur
at the charming inconsistency of his idol.
“Really, Mac, I’m tired of this nonsense, it worries me and wastes
your time.?
“Never worked harder. But does it really trouble you to know I
love you?” he asked anxiously.
“Don’t you see how cross it makes me?” And she walked away,
feeling that things were not going as she intended to have them at
all.
“I don’t mind the thorns if I get the rose at last, and I still hope I
may, some ten years hence,” said this persistent suitor, quite
undaunted by the prospect of a “long wait.?
“I think it is rather hard to be loved whether I like it or not,”
objected Rose, at a loss how to make any headway against such
indomitable hopefulness.
“But you can’t help it, nor can I so I must go on doing it with all
my heart till you marry, and then well, then I’m afraid I may hate
somebody instead,” and Mac spoilt the pen by an involuntary slash
of his knife.
“Please don’t, Mac!?
“Do which, love or hate??
“Don’t do either go and care for someone else; there are plenty of
nice girls who will be glad to make you happy,” said Rose, intent
upon ending her disquiet in some way.
“That is too easy. I enjoy working for my blessings, and the harder