As he came home disappointed and anxious, for he felt uneasy as to the disappearance of his wild friend, Mrs. Smedley met him at the door.
“Please, sir, suit yourself with another lodging,” said she. “I can have no such singings and shoutings going on at night in my house. And that poor little girl, too! you should be ashamed of yourself.”
Leonard frowned, and passed by.
CHAPTER XI.
Meanwhile, on leaving Helen, Burley strode on; and, as if by some better instinct, for he was unconscious of his own steps, he took his way towards the still green haunts of his youth. When he paused at length, he was already before the door of a rural cottage, standing alone in the midst of fields, with a little farmyard at the back; and far through the trees in front was caught a glimpse of the winding Brent.
With this cottage Burley was familiar; it was inhabited by a good old couple who had known him from a boy. There he habitually left his rods and fishing-tackle; there, for intervals in his turbid, riotous life, he had sojourned for two or three days together, fancying the first day that the country was a heaven, and convinced before the third that it was a purgatory.
An old woman, of neat and tidy exterior, came forth to greet him.
“Ah, Master John,” said she, clasping his nerveless hand, “well, the fields be pleasant now; I hope you are come to stay a bit? Do; it will freshen you; you lose all the fine colour you had once, in Lunnon town.”
“I will stay with you, my kind friend,” said Burley, with unusual meekness; “I can have the old room, then?”