I did behave badly,
and I do beg your pardon. Of course I ought to have asked Mr.
Twentyman to come with us. I know that he is a very good fellow."
"Indeed he is," said Mary Masters, with all the emphasis in her power.
"Deedy is, deedy is, deedy is, deedy is," repeated the parrot in a very
angry voice about a dozen times under his shawl, and while the old lady
was remonstrating with her too talkative companion their tickets were
taken and they ran into the Hinxton Station. "If the old lady is going
on to Cheltenham we'll travel third class before we'll sit in the same
carriage again with that bird," said Morton laughing as he took Mary
into the refreshment-room. But the old lady did not get into the same
compartment as they started, and the last that was heard of the parrot
at Hinxton was a quarrel between him and the guard as to certain railway
privileges.
When they had got back into the railway carriage Morton was very
anxious to ask whether she was in truth engaged to marry the young
man as to whose good fellowship she and the parrot had spoken up so
emphatically, but he hardly knew how to put the question. And were
she to declare that she was engaged to him, what should he say
then? Would he not be bound to congratulate her? And yet it would
be impossible that any word of such congratulation should pass his
lips? "You will stay a month at Cheltenham?" he said.
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