“You’re coming to lunch!” he said firmly, piloting her to a spread rug. “I’ll not have you sneaking away and eating biscuits in the hedge, or pretending you’re not hungry. Callander, keep an eye on her while I go and forage!”
“Did you know that you were a favourite of Parker’s?” he added, when he returned. “He was quite snubby to me on your account, over the sandwiches. ‘Miss Lyndesay, sir, doesn’t eat potted rabbit!’ he informed me, coldly. How on earth do they know these things, the dear old Marconis?”
The next moment he was beside Rishwald’s car, looking up at Nettie with his face full of concern.
“You’re not really going, are you? Won’t you stop for lunch, first? Oh, very well—you’ll be in time at Crump, if you fly; and take Rishwald in with you, will you? I say, dear, you’re not ill, or anything else? Didn’t like the worry—was that it? I suppose we’re a lot of ravening savages, but that’s hunting, you know—the sport of gentlemen, they call it! I’m frightfully sorry if you’re upset!”
“I must be getting old,” Mrs. Slinker answered, smiling with rather an effort. “It hurts me to see things harried out of life. I just hate making a fuss, so let me slip away quietly, Youngest One, there’s a lamb. I reckon this sort of game’s got to be in your blood. I liked the running and the scrambling all right—but oh, Laker, why didn’t you warn me that a driven hare screams like a frightened child!”
Rishwald thought himself in clover all the way to Crump, and covered four miles with descriptions of a pet jug, to which he referred familiarly as “my little Toby”; but he was a little downcast when they stopped to find that she had understood him to be talking about a dog.
The field fell off sadly in the afternoon, Honourables and other notabilities vanishing like clouds upon the horizon, and sport improved—perhaps accordingly. Grange had gone back with the Crump cart, and, later, spent a trying hour chasing his master up inaccessible lanes. Larry had a dealing practice at five. He was on the point of offering Deborah a lift back to Kilne, when café diplomacy suddenly prompted otherwise, and he faded silently through a hedge into Grange’s thankful embrace, feeling very mean and destitute of manners.
Deb, however, did not notice his departure, for she herself had designs upon a hedge in a totally opposite direction, the situation having suddenly taken on a very awkward complexion. The last halt had been called near the Bracewells’ house, and the girls were inviting the tail of the field in to tea. The dumb doctor, whose patients had finally decided to die without him, was swallowed up in an instant; and even wary Callander was collared before he realised that Deb was not of the party. She was well across the next field, keeping close in the shadow of the fence, when Christian dropped beside her.
CHAPTER XV
“I suppose you were flattering yourself you’d lost me!” he observed, falling into step, “but I took care to notice when you scurried away. It’s no use trying to disguise yourself in the hedge—the flowers aren’t out yet!” he added quaintly, clinching the compliment with a whimsical smile. “Are you sure you’re not too tired to walk? It’s been a long day, you know. I had the cart sent back, in case you preferred to drive—Clark’s with it in the lane by the Bracewells’. I told him to wait about for another ten minutes.”