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"If you wish me to say the words, consider that I have done so. Why have you taken a dislike to Denas? You used to be very fond of her." "I have not taken any dislike to the girl. I have simply passed out of the season of liking her. In the early spring we find the violet charming, but when summer comes we forget the violet in the rose and the lily and the garden full of richer flowers.
He gave Denas a letter, but refused the offer of a cup of tea, because "the storm was hurrying landward, and he would be busy all to catch the cliff-top before it caught him." Joan took no notice of the interruption, and Denas felt her trouble over such a slight affair as a turned loaf to be almost a personal offence.
He had a long conversation with the dressmaker, and that afternoon Priscilla walked down to John's cottage and made a proposal to Denas. It was so blunt and business-like, so tight in regard to money matters, that John and Joan, and Denas also, were completely deceived.
After Tris was gone the winter came rapidly, but Denas did not dread it. Neither did John nor Joan. John looked upon his boat as a veritable godsend. What danger could come to him on a craft so blessed? All her takes were large and fortunate. The other boats thought it lucky to sail in her wake. On whatever side the Darling Denas cast her bait, they knew it was right to cast on that side also.
Denas smiled, and her smile had in it a mysterious satisfaction which all felt to be offensive. But for the certain advent of seven o'clock, the day would have been intolerable. About half-past six she put on her hat and cloak, and Miss Priscilla ordered her to take them off. "You are not going outside my house to-night, Denas Penelles," she said.
Where had madame been living what was called "brought up?" Denas answered she had always lived by the sea, and the Signor nodded intelligently and said: "Yes! yes! that was what he heard in her voice; the fresh wild winds yes, wild and salt! It is airs from the rose gardens, velvety languors off the vineyards, heat and passions of the sunshine madame wants.
"They have agreed to pay a penny a week for each child," Denas said to her mother. "Well, Denas, some will pay and some will never pay." "To be sure. I know that, mother. But it does not much matter." "Aw, then, it do matter, my girl it do matter, a great deal." And Joan began to cry a little and to arrange her crockery with far more noise than was necessary. "Dear mother, what is it?
But a really good work never falls through; there is always someone to carry it on, and one day Denas was visited among her pupils by the Wesleyan preacher from St. Penfer. He was astonished at her methods and her success, and he represented the claims of such a school with so much force to the next district meeting that they gladly appointed a teacher to fill the place of Denas.
Denas went to Priscilla Mohun's. Reticence is a cultivated quality, and Denas had none of it; so she told the whole story of her ill-treatment to Priscilla and found her full of sympathy. Priscilla had her own little slights to relate, and if all was true she told Denas, then Elizabeth had managed in a week's time to offend many of her old acquaintances irreconcilably.
She had more applications for admission than the cottage would hold, and she selected from these thirty of the youngest of the children. For the first time in many months Denas was sensible of enthusiasm in her employment. But Joan did not apparently share her hopes or her pleasure. She was silent and depressed and answered Denas with a slight air of injury.
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