And there talk on the subject ended. It was not until many a long day afterwards that I knew that Hoad—moved, I suppose, by Harrod's argument against father on the previous evening—had tried to persuade him to help in some sort against his employer in the coming political struggle. He little knew the man with whom he had to deal, and that no depreciatory remarks which spite might induce him to make to father upon his farming capacities would have any influence upon father's bailiff. Only I was glad I had agreed with him in not liking Mr. Hoad. It got me a reproving look from mother, but it got me a little smile from him, which in the state of my feelings added one little grain more to the growing sum of my unconfessed happiness.
It was a long way to Guestling. Away past "The Elms" and its hop-gardens, and many other hop-gardens again, where the bines were growing tall and rich with their pale green clusters; away between blackberry and bryony hedges that the stately foxglove adorned, between banks white with hemlock; away onto the breast of the breezy downs, where the hills were blue for a border, and solitary clumps of pines grew unexpectedly by the road-side.
The west became a sea of flame beyond the vastness of that swelling bosom, just as it had been almost every evening through that glorious summer, and set a line of blood-red upon the horizon for miles around, firing clots of cloud that floated upon lakes of tender green, and hemming other masses with rims of gold that were as the edges of burning linings to their softness.
Mother was almost afraid of it. She declared that she had never seen a sunset that swallowed up half the heavens like that, and she wondered what it boded; for even after we had turned and left the west behind us the clouds that sailed the blue were red with it still.
When we got near to Guestling we were overtaken by Squire Broderick on his roan cob. I think he had intended to ride farther but he seemed so delighted to find mother out-of-doors that he could not detach himself from our party.
"Why, Mrs. Maliphant," I remember his saying with that half-respectful, half-affectionate air of familiarity that he always used to our mother, "if you knew how becoming that white bonnet is you would put it on oftener. It's quite a treat to see you out driving."
Mother declared that only business had brought her out now; and I remember how the squire told her she would never find a new friend to take the place of an old one, not if Harrod were to find her a cow with twice the good points of poor old Betsey. And while Mr. Broderick was paying sweet compliments to mother, Harrod and I exchanged a few more of those commonplace words, the memory of which made me merry, even when presently I was obliged to drop behind and ride alongside of the squire.
I had something to say to him, and as it related to the bailiff, I was not unwilling to drop behind. The night before he had made light of those schemes and improvements on the farm of which I was beginning to be so proud, and I had not thought it fair of him to try and set his own protégé in a poor light before father. I meant to tell him so, and this was the opportunity.
"Mr. Broderick," said I, driving boldly into my subject, "why did you talk last night as if things were going badly on the farm? You told me a while ago that all the farm wanted was a younger head and heart upon it—somebody more ambitious to work for it. Yet now one would almost fancy you mistrusted the very man you recommended, and wanted to make father mistrust him."
I saw the squire start and look at me—look at me in a sharp, inquiring sort of way.