"Oh, but, Mr. Gibbon, do eat your tea!"
He pushed his plate away: "I don't want to eat. I want to talk to you."
Glancing at him she saw that his face, ordinarily of a deep-diffused red,
was as pale as it is possible for such a face to become. Often when she
had felt his eyes upon her and had looked up frankly to meet them, she had
noticed how quickly he had averted them, almost as if detected in a crime.
Now she found them fixed upon her face.
"There is something I have made up my mind to tell you," he said.
"It won't take long, I hope? Because as Emily is at church I have to clear
the tea-things."
She jumped up at once and began to do so. "He is going to tell me about
Bessie," she said to herself. She did not particularly desire his
confidence, and with a little more clatter and fussiness than was
necessary to the task, she put the cups and plates on the tray.
In a preoccupied manner he helped her to do this, took the tray from her,
when it was laden, to the kitchen, while she carried the eatables. Coming
back, together they folded the tablecloth. A pleasant enough occupation to
be shared with a pretty girl; but it was evident, although his trade had
made his blunt fingers deft at the handling of material, and he was
carefully observant of the practice which must be followed in the art,
that he was thinking of other things than maintaining the creases in the
tablecloth.
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