Here Storms seated himself in an empty chair near the fire, and stretching both feet out on the hearth, thrust a hand into each pocket of his corduroy dress. With the inconsistency of a rough nature, he had allowed the anguish and fright that had seized upon him with the first idea of his son's danger to harden into bitterness and wrath against the young man, the moment he learned that all his apprehensions had been groundless. Even the pale, pitiful face of his wife had no softening effect upon him.
"He is alive—but you say nothing more. Tell me is our son maimed—is he hurt?"
"Hurt! He deserves to have his neck broken. I tell you the lad is getting beyond our management—wandering about after the gentry up yonder as if he belonged with them; going after the hunt and almost getting his neck broke on the new horse that fell short of his leap at a wall with a ditch on t'other side, that the best hunter in Sir Noel's stables couldn't'a' cleared."
"Oh, father! you heard that; but was he much hurt? Why didn't they bring him home at once?" cried the mother, with a fever of dread in her eyes.
"Hurt! not half so much as he deserves to be," answered the man, roughly. "Why, that horse may be laid up for a month; besides, at his best, there isn't a day's farm-work under his shining hide. The lad cheated us in the buying of him, a hunter past his prime—that is what has been put upon me, and serves me right for trusting him."
"But you will not tell me, is our Richard hurt?" cried the woman, in a voice naturally mild, but now sharp with anxiety.
"Hurt! not he. Only made a laughing-stock for the grooms and whippers-in who saw him cast head over heels into a ditch, and farther on in the day trudging home afoot."
The woman fell back in her chair with a deep sigh of relief.
"Then he was not hurt. Oh, father! why could ye not tell me this at first?"
"Because ye are aye so foolish o'er the lad, cosseting a strapping grown-up loon as if he was a baby; that is what'll be his ruin in the end."