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It was so great a relief that tears sprang to Minty's eyes when, after a little more conversation, the minister's daughter went away. Aunt Kittredge had taken it for granted that, as she remarked, "if one of them young ones didn't know anything about it the other didn't." Minty felt her burden of guilt to be greater than she could bear.
"Let us hope so," concluded Bradley, with unabated gravity. "And, now that you have consented, let me add from my own experience that Miss Minty's lemon-pies alone are worthy of any concession." The dinner-hour came.
"What do you care if you only have blue beads and lots of candy?" Poor Minty's face lengthened again, and her jaw fell. "There's my two dollars and thirty cents, Jason," she said anxiously. Jason started; a ray of hope flushed his freckled face. "We can buy a big turkey over at Jonas Hicks's for all that money," continued Minty.
She smoothed the limp roll into which Minty's front hair had been coaxed, and pushed her inside the open door, where the child lingered. "You might tell who she is, grandpa," she called. "Why, then, come now, I will. It's mean to tease ye. It's Miss Lacey." "Oh !" A long-drawn sound of disappointment escaped from both his hearers. "Why couldn't Thinkright have said so!" exclaimed Mrs. Lem.
Bradley, appearing at the door. "Yes," said Bradley, faintly, from the bushes. "Minty's ready. You might take her home." "All right. I'll wait." "I hope I haven't frightened Miss Sharpe away," said Mainwaring. "She isn't going, surely?" "Only to get some better clothes, on account of company. I'm afraid you are giving her a good deal of trouble, Mr. Mainwaring," said Mrs. Bradley, laughing.
The news of Minty's success was further corroborated by Sir Robert, who later that evening called Bradley into the study. "Frank has been writing from Nice that he has renewed his acquaintance with some old Californian friends of yours a Mr. and Miss Sharpe. Lady Canterbridge says that they are well known in London to some of our friends, but I would like to ask you something about them.
"I quite forgot that you were here as an invalid only, and that we owe our pleasure to the accident of your pain." She spoke a little artificially, he thought, yet her cheeks had not lost their pink bloom, nor her eyes their tranquillity. Had he heard Minty's criticism he might have believed that the organic omission noticed by her was a fact.
Bradley stayed at the mill all night, and will not be here until breakfast, when he brings your friend Mr. Richardson with him" Mainwaring scarcely repressed a movement of impatience "who arrives early. It's unfortunate that Miss Sharpe can't come to-day." In his abstraction Mainwaring did not notice that Mrs. Bradley slightly accented Minty's formal appellation, and said carelessly,
"Nor a gold-finder," returned his wife, with a cruel little depression of her pink nostrils, "but you can work all night in that stupid mill and then," she added in a low voice, to escape Minty's attention, "spend the whole of the next day examining and following up a boy's discovery that his own relations had been too lazy and too ignorant to understand and profit by.
Minty's lean, strong arms had often rowed her about the little salt lake, but Sylvia was ambitious to be her own boatman; and this afternoon she was practicing by herself, catching crabs and splashing, laughing at her own awkwardness until, breathing fast, her pale cheeks pink from exertion, she pulled in her oars and floated on the blue ripples, looking at the full green of leafy boughs among the sombre richness of the evergreens, and listening to the spring gladness of the robin's songs.
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