‘Hayward’s—oh, not a bit too far!’ and holding up her skirts, she picked her way as daintily as her weighty chaussure would permit, along the narrow green footway that crossed the expanse of dewy turf in which the dogs careered, getting their noses covered with flakes of thick gossamer, cemented together by dew. Fly scraped it off with a delicate forepaw, Vixen rolled over, and doubly entangled it in her rugged coat. Humfrey Charlecote strode on before his companion with his hands in his pockets, and beginning to whistle, but pausing to observe, over his shoulder, ‘A sweet day for getting up the roots! You’re not getting wet, I hope?’
‘I couldn’t through this rhinoceros hide, thank you. How exquisitely the mist is curling up, and showing the church-spire in the valley.’
‘And I suppose you have been reading all manner of books?’
‘I think the best was a great history of France.’
‘France!’ he repeated in a contemptuous John Bull tone.
‘Ay, don’t be disdainful; France was the centre of chivalry in the old time.’
‘Better have been the centre of honesty.’
‘And so it was in the time of St. Louis and his crusade. Do you know it, Humfrey?’
‘Eh?’
That was full permission. Ever since Honora had been able to combine a narration, Humfrey had been the recipient, though she seldom knew whether he attended, and from her babyhood upwards had been quite contented with trotting in the wake of his long strides, pouring out her ardent fancies, now and then getting an answer, but more often going on like a little singing bird, through the midst of his avocations, and quite complacent under his interruptions of calls to his dogs, directions to his labourers, and warnings to her to mind her feet and not her chatter. In the full stream of crusaders, he led her down one of the multitude of by-paths cleared out in the hazel coppice