“And you have been all this time going?”
“You see, I thought I’d walk through the forest,” he said, apologetically.
“You should be there now—you should not have waited on the road! Is your Cousin Stephen—is that his name?—there?”
“I don’t know,” he said, carelessly.
“Ah, you should be there,” she said. “Squire Davenant would be friendly with you again.”
“I’m afraid you haven’t hit the right nail on the head there,” he said. “I rather think he wants to give me a good rowing about a scrape I’ve got into.”
“Tell me about that.”
“Oh, it’s about money—the usual thing. I got into a mess, and had to borrow some money of a Jew, and he got me to sign a paper, promising to pay after Squire Davenant’s death; he called it a post obit—I didn’t know what it was then, but I do now; for the squire got to hear of it, but how, hanged if I can make out; and he wrote to me and to the Jew, saying that he shouldn’t leave me a brass farthing. Of course the Jew was wild; but I gave him another sort of bill, and it’s all right.”
“Excepting that you will lose your fortune,” said Una, with a little sigh. “What will you do?”
“That’s a conundrum which I’ve long ago given up. By Jove! I’ll come and be a woodman in the forest!”