Lily resumed,—"Yes, I should like to hear you talk with Lion."
"You mean your guardian, Mr. Melville?"
"Yes, you know that."
"And why should you like to hear me talk to him?"
"Because there are some things in which I doubt if he was altogether right, and I would ask you to express my doubts to him; you would, would you not?"
"But why can you not express them yourself to your guardian; are you afraid of him?"
"Afraid, no indeed! But—ah, how many people there are coming this way! There is some tiresome public meeting in the town to-day. Let us take the ferry: the other side of the stream is much pleasanter; we shall have it more to ourselves."
Turning aside to the right while she thus spoke, Lily descended a gradual slope to the margin of the stream, on which they found an old man dozily reclined in his ferry-boat.
As, seated side by side, they were slowly borne over the still waters under a sunless sky, Kenelm would have renewed the subject which his companion had begun, but she shook her head, with a significant glance at the ferryman. Evidently what she had to say was too confidential to admit of a listener, not that the old ferryman seemed likely to take the trouble of listening to any talk that was not addressed to him. Lily soon did address her talk to him, "So, Brown, the cow has quite recovered."
"Yes, Miss, thanks to you, and God bless you. To think of your beating the old witch like that!"