"And I don't care, for my part, whether they do or don't," she added. "I get so tired of the talk about Sir Keith's virtues. Only I do wish somebody could keep Maggie from behaving like an utter goose! It is all Millie's fault. If you knew the nonsense she talks to Maggie!"
"Better, perhaps, that I should not know, since I cannot check it," I said gravely. "And, my dear, I don't think you have to judge Maggie."
She looked up at me, with tears in her eyes.
"If only they would not treat you so!" she said. "I shouldn't mind anything else so much."
Her sympathy does comfort me. I cannot help feeling that.
August 8. Saturday.—We had our drive in the dog-cart yesterday, Thyrza and I,—not only to Gurglepool and back, but quite a long round, through the wildest country, all dales and mountains, tea-coloured golden-bedded torrents, trees, grass and rocks, blue sky and sunshine, with nothing to mar the complete enjoyment, except recollections which could not be utterly put aside.
No one but Thyrza would come with me. I think Denham wished it, and had not resolution to stand out against the conclave of sisters.
Elfie looked unhappy all the morning, and shunned me persistently. I hardly like to allow to myself how keenly I am pained by this change of manner. I begged Maggie and Nona to take care that she was not overdone, and this was all that I could do, for they were bent on taking her, and I knew that the waggonette would be full without Thyrza and myself.
The next Dale, running parallel with Beckdale, quite different in character, hardly so lovely, I thought, yet with its own distinctive beauty. The hills are lower, more bare and bleak, and the inevitable river which drains it flows often underground, entirely disappearing for a while beneath the dry and stony bed which marks its course, and later on reappearing. In times of flood, the dry bed is filled with a rushing stream.
Far up the Dale we entered a pretty and picturesque little side-valley, branching off at right angles, and well filled with trees. By-the-bye, when I spoke of Gurglepool as about three miles off, I did not understand that that was only the short-cut walking distance. It is a long drive.