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Bolton did not hear the bell, or whether she heard it and decided that it would be absurd to leave her work for it, when Miss Kilburn, who was so much nearer, could answer it, she did not come, even at a second ring, and Annie was forced to go to the door herself, or leave the poor man dripping in the cold wind outside.
But here was no cyclonic invasion of a dark, cold sitting-room. Old Annie and Asher knew boys! A log blazed brightly in the fireplace and the lamp was lit. If the room was over-warm, it proved simply that Annie had seen boys of another generation rushing down of a Christmas morning, scantily clad.
She was resting her elbows on the chair-arm, and, with hands lightly clasped, gazing thoughtfully into space. Fine lines had sprung into her forehead, and now she took off her glasses and wiped them carefully on her apron, as if that would help her to an inner vision. "No, I know that. Annie's a nice girl. There's nothin' forward about Annie. But I was only wonderin' where you could live.
"Nor am I," responded Annie with a sigh, which she quickly suppressed. "The whole thing fitted in admirably with our wishes," continued Rose, "and now we need not do anything further in the matter. Rumor, in the shape of Hetty Jones' tongue and Polly Singleton's hints, will do the rest for us." "Do you really think that Maggie Oliphant cares for Mr. Hammond?" asked Lucy Marsh.
The two children now appeared, running around the brow of the hill, the boy calling in great excitement: "Aunt Annie, oh! Aunt Annie, we've found a squirrel-hole. We chased him into it. Can't Susie sit by the hole and keep him in, while I go for a spade to dig him out?"
That bower by the loch, too, was favourable to the fondlings of a secret love; nor was it sometimes less to the prisoner a refuge from the eeriness which comes of ennui if it is not the same thing under the pressure of which strange feeling he would creep out at times when Annie could not be with him; nay, sometimes when the family had gone to bed.
"I believe not," said Mrs. Millar dolefully. "Then there will be a run, like what one has read of in similar circumstances a rush of the people, and a riot in the town," suggested Annie, getting excited over the idea. "The police may have to guard the bank and the Bank house soldiers may have to come from Nenthorn!" "Oh, surely not," cried Dora; "the poor Careys who could treat them so cruelly?"
Amongst these was Annie Grahame, whose marked preference more than atoned to the Viscount for her father's coldness. In vain Grahame commanded that his daughter should change her manner towards him.
The horses were waiting, hitched up to a serviceable light wagon, and driven by the "help." He was a thin young man, with red hair, and he blushed vicariously for Jim and Annie, who were really too entertained with each other, and at the idea of the new life opening up before them, to think anything about blushing.
"Yes," Falk laughed. "That's his latest idea. He was talking about it the other night. Of course, that's foolishness. It's not my line at all. I told him so." "I wouldn't like you to go away altogether," she repeated. "It would make a great difference to me." "Would it really?" He had a strange mysterious impulse to speak to her about Annie Hogg.
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