Mr. Dunnock said that Doctor Boulder must write to the Clerk of the Weather about the deplorably healthy winter. Mr. Yockney laughed, and then both of them remembered that it must be lunch time.
“Come, Yockney, you must join us,” said Mr. Dunnock, and Anne, coming up at that moment, added her invitation, which the young man was glad enough to accept.
A line of trestles had been put up on the ice, and crowds were waiting round the shoemaker’s, and the men who let out skates for hire, but most popular of all were the sellers of hot potatoes and roast chestnuts with their buckets of glowing coals. Mr. Yockney purchased three steaming cups of cocoa, while Anne went to fetch the satchel full of sandwiches, and in a little while they were sitting on the edge of a grassy bank.
“I have been seeing a friend of yours, Miss Dunnock,” said the doctor after the second sandwich. “Little Rachel Sotheby, and I fear that it may have been your doing that I had to be called in, for I understand it was you who took her to the circus. She caught a chill on the way back. Oh, no, it is nothing in the least serious, though she is rather delicate.”
Anne expressed her concern, and hastened to explain to her father how she had met the Sothebys in the tea-shop, and had taken the little girl to see the circus.
“Extraordinary chap that old grocer is,” said Mr. Yockney. “He’d have been a rich man by now, I fancy, if it had not been for that good-for-nothing son of his. Just fancy, he told me that he was spending all his money on making his son a gentleman!”
This seemed to Mr. Dunnock an excellent joke, and he laughed heartily. He disliked the grocer for his assurance, and his cheerfulness, and his nonconformity, and was ready to hear anything to his disadvantage.
“The great news,” continued Mr. Yockney, “only I expect you know it, is that the prodigal is expected home next week. He’s been in Paris, and has been going the pace a bit, I fancy.”
“Oh, I am so glad,” said Anne with real interest showing in her voice. “I have heard so much about him from Mr. Sotheby, and I quite look forward to seeing what he’s like. He sounds quite an interesting person.”
A frown gathered on her father’s face.