“Robarts, my dear fellow,” said Mr. Sowerby, when they were well under way down one of the glades of the forest,—for the place where the hounds met was some four or five miles from the house of Chaldicotes,—“ride on with me a moment. I want to speak to you; and if I stay behind we shall never get to the hounds.” So Mark, who had come expressly to escort the ladies, rode on alongside of Mr. Sowerby in his pink coat.
“My dear fellow, Fothergill tells me that you have some hesitation about going to Gatherum Castle.”
“Well, I did decline, certainly. You know I am not a man of pleasure, as you are. I have some duties to attend to.”
“Gammon!” said Mr. Sowerby; and as he said it he looked with a kind of derisive smile into the clergyman’s face.
“It is easy enough to say that, Sowerby; and perhaps I have no right to expect that you should understand me.”
“Ah, but I do understand you; and I say it is gammon. I would be the last man in the world to ridicule your scruples about duty, if this hesitation on your part arose from any such scruple. But answer me honestly, do you not know that such is not the case?”
“I know nothing of the kind.”
“Ah, but I think you do. If you persist in refusing this invitation will it not be because you are afraid of making Lady Lufton angry? I do not know what there can be in that woman that she is able to hold both you and Lufton in leading-strings.”
Robarts, of course, denied the charge and protested that he was not to be taken back to his own parsonage by any fear of Lady Lufton. But though he made such protest with warmth, he knew that he did so ineffectually. Sowerby only smiled and said that the proof of the pudding was in the eating.
“What is the good of a man keeping a curate if it be not to save him from that sort of drudgery?” he asked.