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Let me congratulate you." "Well, don't congratulate me just yet. I am not at all certain whether I shall need any congratulations or not." "I am sure I hope you will be very successful." "Do you mean that?" Miss Sommerton looked at him quietly for a moment. "Do you think," she said, "I am in the habit of saying things I do not mean?" "I think you are."
Perhaps you are not familiar with the history of our trouble with England? Don't you remember it commenced in Boston Harbour practically?" "Oh yes, I recollect now. I had forgotten it. Something about tea, was it not?" "Yes, something about tea." "Well, talking of tea, Miss Sommerton, may I take you to the conservatory and bring you a cup of it?"
"Oh, it is too good of you," said the elder lady. "Not a bit of it," whispered Miss Sommerton; "I hate the man before I have seen him." When John Trenton came in to breakfast, he found his friend Mason waiting for him. That genial gentleman was evidently ill at ease, but he said in an offhand way "The ladies have already breakfasted.
Phyllis, when she ran crying up-stairs after the conversation with her father, went to her room, and fell into a chair by the window. So it chanced that she overheard the conference between Colonel Sommerton and Barnaby, and long after it was ended she still sat there leaning on the window-sill. Her eyes showed a trifle of irritation, but the tears were all gone.
"Well, Miss Sommerton, I hope you will consider anything that happens to be in my favour. You see, we are really old friends, after all." "Old enemies, you mean." "Oh, I don't know about that. I would rather look on myself as your friend than your enemy." "The letter you wrote me was not a very friendly one." "I am not so sure. We differ on that point, you know."
"Oh, it's all my fault! all my fault!" wailed Miss Sommerton. "It is, indeed," answered Trenton, briefly. She tried to straighten herself up, but, too wet and chilled and limp to be heroic, she sank on a rock and began to cry. "Please don't do that," said the artist, softly. "Of course I shouldn't have agreed with you.
Miss Sommerton rose indignantly, and was on the point of threatening to leave the place, when a moment's reflection showed her that she didn't know where to go, and remembering she was not as brave in the darkness and in the woods as in Boston, she meekly set about the search for dry twigs and sticks.
It was a moment never to be forgotten by either of the men. "I cordially congratulate you, Colonel Sommerton, on your nomination," said Tom, with great feeling, "and you may count on my hearty support." "If I don't have to support you, and pay your office rent in the bargain, all the rest of my life, I miss my guess, you young scamp!" growled the Colonel, in a major key. "Be off with you!"
Tom moved away to let the Colonel's friends crowd up and shake hands with him; but the delighted youth could not withhold a Parthian shaft. As he retreated he said, "Oh, Colonel, don't bother about my support; Sommerton Plantation will be ample for that!" "Hit do beat all thunder how dese white men syfoogles eroun' in politics," old Barnaby thought to himself.
"I should think you would find great pleasure in taking up parties of handsome ladies such as I understand now and then visit the falls." "Ah," said the boatman, "it is very nice, of course; but, except from Miss Sommerton, we don't get much." "Really," said the artist; "and who is Miss Sommerton, pray?" The half-breed nodded up the path. "Oh, indeed, that is her name. I did not know."