The singer in the background began an appeasing little chant, as if he knew that Lancaster writhed.
“Perhaps some of us prefer it as it is,” he answered coldly. “Hadn’t you better be looking after your—your brothers? There’s rather a smart police-sergeant in Bluecaster.”
“They’re not my brothers. They’re just stopping with us, that’s all. Are we trespassing?” She lifted an anxious face. “I didn’t know the lane was yours. I’m ever so sorry! We’d better go on, hadn’t we, after the boys? but we’ll come back the other way.”
Lanty reddened, ashamed. The singer gave him a friendly smile over the girl’s head.
“It isn’t my lane—of course not. There’s no reason you shouldn’t motor down it if you happen to know a collapsible method of passing carts. It’s a favourite walk of mine, that’s all. And everything was just about asleep.”
She looked a little puzzled and still troubled.
“I expect you do feel it’s your own lane, really! I’ve only been here since March—we’re at Watters in Gilthrotin—but I’ve noticed people seem to think that lots of things belong to them just because they’ve had them somewhere round all their lives—hills and footpaths and favourite views—things like that. The man in the cottage behind us was dreadfully vexed because we cut down a half-dead sycamore by the river. He said he was used to seeing it from his bedroom window—wasn’t it funny of him? That’s what you feel about the lane, though, isn’t it? I wish I’d known! Any other lane would have done for us.”
Lancaster choked his feelings with an effort.
“Please do not bother about me,” he said curtly, raising his cap. “You have every right to the lane. And I don’t think it was funny at all. Good-night.”
She responded reluctantly, feeling that she had somehow failed to put things right. She wanted to placate this cross, solitary-minded person who had already turned his thin, serious face back to the break in the hedge. Perhaps he was not really cross. He might be suffering from nerves. They ought not to have worried him, poor thing!