"I only want to speak to you for a minute."
Amongst the slippery apprehensions in which she had taken flight Mary
had struggled to the comfortable rock that Bob's appearance must have
been chance, not deliberate--how should he have known where to seek
them? Sure ground, too, was made by the belief that it were well to
take the apology with which doubtless he had come--well to be on good
terms.
Encouraged by these supports, "Shoo!" she cried to her charges. "Don't
you hear what your brother asks?"
"Do _you_ want us to go?"
"Oh, shoo! shoo!"
Laughing, they shoo'd.
Bob let them from earshot. "I want to say how sorry I am about Friday
night."
"I have forgotten all that."
"I want to know that you have forgiven me."
"I tell you I have forgotten it."
"That is not enough. You can't have forgotten it." He took a seat
beside her; repeated: "You can't have forgotten it. How can you have
forgotten a thing that only happened three days ago?"
"In the sense that I have wiped it out--I do not choose to remember
it."
"Well, I remember it. I cannot forget it. I behaved very badly. I want
to know that you forgive me."
She told him: "Yes, then--oh yes, yes." His persistence alarmed her,
set her again to flight among her apprehensions.
"Not when you say it like that.
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