I was so unhappy this afternoon that I
actually deliberated whether I had the courage to do something
desperate,--make faces at Mr. Erveng, or race upstairs and interview
Mrs. Erveng, or call Hilliard names out loud,--_anything_, so that
they would send me home.
But after a while I concluded I wouldn't try any of these desperate
remedies; not that I minded what they'd say at home (teasing, I mean),
but papa would want to know the whole affair,--he has got to think a
good deal of Mr. Erveng,--and besides, somehow, though she's so gentle
and refined, Mrs. Erveng isn't at all the sort of person that one could
do those things to. So I said nothing, though I thought a great deal;
and I went to bed before nine o'clock thoroughly disgusted with the
Ervengs.
Hilliard was at breakfast the next morning, just as stiff and prim and
proper as ever,--it almost seemed as if what had happened in the storm
must be a dream. But later on, when we were on the piazza, he spoke of
it to me.
"I feel that I should explain to you that I have a nervous dread of
a thunder storm," he said, in that proper, grown-up way in which he
speaks, but getting very red.
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