A Bride from the Bush Read Online Free Page B

Well, then?’
    â€˜Well, then—I like your mother. She has eyes like yours, Alfred, large and still and kind, and she is big and motherly.’
    â€˜Then, oh, my darling, why on earth didn’t you kiss her?’
    â€˜Kiss her? Not me! Why should I?’
    â€˜She meant to kiss you; I saw she did.’
    â€˜Don’t you believe it! Even if she had, it would have been only for your sake. You wait a little bit; wait till she knows me, and if she wants to kiss me then—let her!’
    Alfred was pained by his young wife’s tone; he had never before heard her speak so strangely, and her eyes were wistful. He did not quite understand her, but he did not try to, then; he varied the subject.
    â€˜How about Gran?’
    â€˜Oh, that Gran!’ cried Gladys. ‘I can’t suffer him at all.’
    â€˜Can’t suffer Gran! What on earth do you mean, Gladys?’
    â€˜I mean that he was just a little beast in the boat! You think he was as glad to see you as you were him, because you judge by yourself; but not a bit of it; I know better. It was all put on with him, and a small “all” too. Then you asked him to tell me about the places we passed, and he only laughed at me. Ah, you may laugh at people without moving a muscle, but people may see it all the same; and I did, all along; and just before we got here I very near told him so. If I had, I’d have given him one, you stake your life!’
    â€˜I’m glad you didn’t,’ said Alfred devoutly, but in great trouble. ‘I never heard him say anything to rankle like that; I thought he was very jolly, if you ask me. And really, Gladdie, old Gran’s as good a fellow as ever lived; besides which, he has all the brains of thefamily.’
    â€˜Perhaps,’ said Gladys, softening, ‘my old man has got a double share of something better than brains!’
    â€˜Nonsense, darling! But at least the Judge was pleasant; what did you think of the Judge?’
    â€˜I funked him.’
    â€˜Good gracious! Why?’
    â€˜He’s so dreadfully dignified; and he looks you through and through—not nastily, like Gran does, but as if you were something funny in a glass case.’
    â€˜What stuff and nonsense, Gladdie! You’re making me miserable. Look here: talk to the Judge: draw him out a bit. That’s all he wants, and he likes it.’
    â€˜What am I to call him—“Judge”?’
    â€˜No: not that: never that. For the present, “Sir James,” I think.’
    â€˜And what am I to talk about?’
    â€˜Oh, anything—Australia. Interest him about the Bush. Try, dearest, at dinner—to please me.’
    â€˜Very well,’ said Gladys; ‘I’ll have a shot.’
    And she had one, though it was not quite the kind of shot Alfred would have recommended—at any rate, not for a first shot. For, on thinking it over, it seemed to Gladys that, with relation to the Bush, nothing could interest a Judge so much as the manner of administering the law there, which she knew something about. Nor was the subject unpromising or unsafe: it was only her way of leading up to it that was open to criticism.
    â€˜I suppose, Sir James,’ she began, ‘you have lots of trying to do?’
    â€˜Trying?’ said the Judge, looking up from his soup; for the Bride had determined not to be behindhand in keeping her promise, and had opened the attack thus early.
    â€˜As if he were a tailor!’ thought Granville. ‘Trials, sir,’ he suggested suavely. He was sitting next Gladys, who was on the Judge’s right.
    â€˜Ah, trials!’ said the Judge with a faint—a very faint—smile. ‘Oh, yes—a great number.’
    A sudden thought struck Gladys. She became the interested instead of the interesting party. She forgot the Bush, and stared at her father-in-law in sudden awe.
    â€˜Are there many murder trials among them, Sir