Bran too got up, very shakily, and going, with his tail tucked in, to the bank on his mistress’s side of the lane, was sick; after which he shivered violently and lay down, all the knight-errantry squeezed out of him. The distracted Nest bent over him, half scolding, half petting, till, bethinking herself of Bran’s victim, she turned round and saw that he was engaged in tying a not over-clean red cotton handkerchief round his right trouser leg, just below the knee.
She drew a long breath. “Has he bitten you badly?”
“It feels like it,” responded the young man grimly. “I will take a look at it presently and wash the place. I hope I haven’t hurt the dog overmuch; I don’t blame him, on the whole.”
This magnanimity nearly reduced Miss Meredith to tears again. “Oh, I cannot tell you how sorry I am! And you must have the bite attended to at once! It might be dangerous . . . though of course my dog is not in the least mad. Will you . . . will you come to the Precentory—I am Miss Meredith, the Precentor’s daughter—and——”
“To the Precentory—I?” he interrupted with a laugh half scornful and half amused. “A runaway sailor at a Precentory! No, I’ll go to some farm——”
“There’s Rhosson, just back there; and Mrs. Lloyd is very kind.”
He shook his head. “No, too near the landing-place. But I will find another farm, never fear, miss; and get taken on for the hay harvest, too, with luck.”
Nest began to fumble in the little reticule at her waist. “You must allow me, please . . .” For “Miss” had come back into the conversation, and the country accent; and the young man must be poor, she thought, since he had been pressed for a common sailor. It was merely imagination which seemed, just now, to have given her a glimpse of something different.
But if it was embarrassing to intend bestowing money upon him, it was much more so to find that the intention must go unfulfilled, for she had not a penny with her. Very flushed, she desisted from the search, and said awkwardly instead: “Will you not tell me your name . . .” and stopped because he looked amused; then added quickly, “You may be quite easy; I am not going to a magistrate, after—this.”
The runaway at that smiled fully; and when he smiled he was good-looking, scamp or no. “Mark Thompson, that’s my name.” Then he glanced at Bran, still lying dejectedly close to the bank. “I’ll let you be going on first this time, miss, I reckon—not that I bear your dog any grudge; he’s a good-plucked one for sure.”
Nest murmured appreciation of this generous attitude. “And you will go to a farm, and have the wound washed as soon as possible,” she adjured. “Perhaps indeed it ought to be cauterised.”
“Thank you, miss. Perhaps it ought.”
She pulled Bran to his feet. “And I hope that you will succeed in finding work.”
“Thank you kindly, miss.” Once more the forelock was touched; and next moment the Leghorn hat and the high-waisted pink muslin dress were going away down the narrow lane and disappearing into the wider one which met it. Their owner did not look back. The ex-privateersman waited another moment, then, compressing his lips, he leant up against the flowery bank, untied the red handkerchief, rolled up the leg of his loose trousers, and looked at the blood running down his calf from the blue and lacerated wound which was the memento of his meeting with Miss Nest Meredith, the Precentor’s daughter.
(4)
Nest Meredith walked home rather fast, followed by a very different Bran from the bounding dog who had set out with her. Both their thoughts were occupied with the same person, yet they could not share them with each other. The immediate question for Nest was, how much she should tell her Papa, and she had not made up her mind upon this point even when she entered his study to see if he were back.
He was, and Mr. Thistleton, too, of course.
“My dear young lady,” said the latter when, a little shyly, she presented him with his sheet of notes, “had I known that you were going in search of what I lost, I should never have mentioned my carelessness!”
“I think that is what Papa felt,” answered Nest, a dimple showing for a moment. “But you see, sir, the distance is not great, and the gratification of recovering your notes would have repaid me for a much longer walk.”
“For a lady, my daughter is really a prodigious walker,” explained the Precentor. “I have known her compass as much as five miles in a morning! And this walk, I am sure, gave her nothing but pleasure—is that not so, Nest?”
His daughter’s hesitation was so fleeting that it would have needed a very acute perception to notice it. “Oh, yes, indeed, Papa; as you know, I love walking!”
“Yet I expected to find you back before us,” went on Dr. Meredith, “instead of the other way about.”
“I did not hasten back,” said Nest, dropping her gaze. “I . . . went into a hayfield on the way home, which delayed me.” That was true; though the delay had not occurred in the hayfield.
Outside in the hall, with its panelled ceiling and old music gallery over the door, she stood rather guiltily reflecting, under the eyes of two prebendaries and a bishop. It was true that she had not yet had the chance of telling her father privately about her encounter, and, owing to Mr. Thistleton’s presence, might not get that chance for a little while, but she was not sure that when it came she intended to take it. Would it not be a little like going to a magistrate with information about the runaway, a thing which she had told this Mark Thompson that she would not do? Besides, Papa might be rather horrified at the episode; might even feel inclined to curtail the freedom which had always been hers, since she grew up, the right of roaming unaccompanied about this countryside where she was so well known and loved. The question of telling Aunt Pennefather she never even debated.
Old Dixon, the English butler, was arranging something in a corner of the hall. Perceiving her standing there, he made an inquiry.
“Have Bran been fighting, miss, this afternoon when he was out with you? Richards say just now that he won’t eat his supper, and have gone into his kennel, all skeery-like. But he didn’t see no marks on him.”
“Oh, poor Bran!” exclaimed his mistress involuntarily. Then she pulled herself up. “No, he has not been fighting, Dixon,” she replied, and passed on up the stairs to her bedroom. She had not told a lie, since “fighting,” in the case of a dog, had surely a strictly technical meaning, which did not cover conflict with a human being.
Thoughtfully she laid upon the bed the parasol which had so unavailingly chastised the culprit, and went and looked out of the window. But the Cathedral seemed to be gazing across at her with sternness—a vast reproof; in purple stone; so she came away again.
At the evening meal the talk veered round at one moment from the archæological questions which had been engaging Dr. Meredith and his guest to the Dutch prize brought into the Sound (of which Mrs. Pennefather now heard for the first time) and surmise was expressed as to whether the vessel were still there; had Nest heard when she went back to Rhosson this afternoon? A little nervous of approaching the subject at all Nest was thereupon constrained to tell them that the prize had sailed; and in the course of further talk was incautious enough to mention its name.
“The Vrijheid—indeed! Is that what she was called?” observed Dr. Meredith. “I presume that signifies ‘freedom’ or something of the sort. But how did you learn the name, Nesta? From Mrs. Lloyd, I suppose?”
Nesta’s napkin slid suddenly from her lap and she stooped after it instead of replying.
“Miss Meredith has doubtless better eyesight than ours,” Mr. Thistleton meanwhile gallantly observed.
“Not so very much, I think,”