They descended the avenue in silence, to meet Christian speeding anxiously up it. His face lightened when he saw Dixon, though he made no comment, only gave him a Christmas greeting, and pressed Crump hospitality upon him. But Dixon refused obstinately.
“Thank you kindly, sir, but I’d best be getting back. I left the door open, and my old mother’ll likely get feared. He never asked me, Mr. Christian, and he’s been dead such a short while. I can’t rightly feel that he isn’t still there.”
“You’ve infected him, Nettie!” Christian said, as lightly as he could, when Dixon had vanished among the trees. “You’ve told him all the things you thought you saw, and all the other things you thought you felt.”
“I told him nothing,” she answered bitterly, “but I’m not surprised. He felt the chain at my heel. If you put your life into the hands of a man like Slinker, you’ll never quite escape him after, alive or dead!”
In the hall she slipped out of his coat, and he brought her a steaming glass; and as she took it from him, over the snow-smooth park the bells began to ring. Christian opened the door, and let the joy of them flood the sombre hall. The clock struck in the dimness under the stair, and at the foot of the steps the fiddler broke into his thin, wailing hymn, and the shouter cried them their Christmas mirth. Mrs. Slinker laid her hand lightly on Christian’s shoulder, and kissed him.
“A Merry Christmas to you, Laker, my dear!” she said, with a thrill in her voice and a kindly look. “Here’s luck to Lakin’ Lyndesay!” and she lifted her glass and drank. Then she raised it again, turning south to Dockerneuk. “And here’s the right home to every soul, and to all the lost dogs a-seeking!”
CHAPTER XI
Deb turned from earnest contemplation of a window of tinned fruits to find the Hon. Mrs. Stalker’s carriage at the grocer’s steps, that august personage herself enthroned therein, wearing a fur garment of such dimensions as to send all the Crump cats scuttling for shelter to the nearest drain. The coachman touched his hat, but the great lady appeared to find the street perfectly empty, though Deb stared defiantly, her back to the tinned fruits. Silver-hair Savaury of Tasser, marking the situation from the Post-Office, hurried to her relief.
He bestowed a sweeping bow upon furred grandeur as he passed, and the Honourable smiled and put out a hand, for Savaury of Tasser was “quite all right,” and not to be ignored by anybody; but Savaury merely waved a lavender glove gracefully in her face, and, throwing her an airy “Rejoiced to see you, dear lady! So sorry—important business,” pulled up in front of Deb. “Can you come to dinner?” he added loudly, with his back to greatness, and all Crump heard him.
A faint giggle came from somewhere behind the Honourable’s tiger-skin, but Deb was too upset to catch it. She looked at her knight with more doubt than gratitude in her eyes.