Dick did as he was bidden, but laughing in an embarrassed fashion, for it was rather mortifying to have to be mistaken for a bag of meal.
When the mounting was accomplished, Doss Umpey led the horse away by the opposite trail to that by which Dick had arrived on the previous day.
Dick took off his hat to Nell with the utmost courtesy of which he was capable, and she waved her hand in return, colouring high with pleasure.
“No one ever treated me so nicely before,” she murmured. Then she stood watching until the man on horseback, with the shambling figure of Doss Umpey at his side, passed out of sight.
Never had a day seemed so long to Nell as that one. Her usual avocations had no power to beguile her, and when, secure in her solitude, she brought her beloved books downstairs, she found that even reading had lost a great deal of its charm.
She was actively anxious, too, about the dog, for the poor creature seemed to grow worse as the hours went on, and in the afternoon Nell began to realize that Pip had fought his last fight, and was preparing to make his exit from a world of strife.
The knowledge moved her to real grief, for the dog, though savage and surly to other people, had been her friend and companion, the only playmate she possessed. Many and many were the solitary days they had spent together, and there had been not a few nights when the fierce deerhound had been her only companion at the Lone House on Blue Bird Ridge.
If Pip were dying, then she would not leave him alone; so, bringing some sewing, she came to sit on a little stool near the fire, where the languid eyes of the poor animal could see her to the last.
The afternoon was gorgeously fine, and Nell would have taken her work into the sunshine but for the dog. As it was, she sat in the dark cheerless room by the fire, administering broth at intervals to her dumb patient, and talking to it in a low crooning tone, which seemed to soothe the poor creature.
Her sewing was of a very uninteresting character, and consisted in mending up the worst rents in an old coat of her grandfather’s, a garment so patched and worn that it would have been difficult for an outsider to tell of what it was originally made.