“You did not quite score there, Lionel, my boy. Always will rush your fences with the fair sex; yes, and very often come an awful cropper. What a fool you must have looked with your ‘pins’ in the air. How glad you must have been that the gipsy wasn’t there. You’ll hardly look for him now; no, you will see him somewhere first.”
And so, having blown himself severely up, Fulrake gained his room, changed his things, and rolling a cigarette, soon forgot his intention of “cultivating” Annie in a new novel which he found in his bag.
Meantime, where was Mat? Poor Mat! he had walked up to the stockyard, and finding the place deserted, he placed his arms on one of the rails and thus addressed the fence around him.—
“I knew how ’twould be when that swell came with the dancing-shoes. Of course she’d prefer his genteel manners to my rough ones. He’s ‘The Honourable;’ well, so am I—at least, I always try to be. I’ll break his head,—no, I won’t, that wouldn’t be honourable; besides, they’d kick me off the place if I did, and rightly, too, and she would be no longer kind. No, I’ll go home—home to the Forest; yes, with Tim. And yet, the other day I said I’d stop. Why, I must stop; I’ve signed articles for partnership. Hardly know what to do; wish some one would tell me. Wonder whether the parson would. I’ll ask him.”
Mat! Mat; heretofore your strongest point amongst men—amongst dangers by flood and field—has been self-reliance and presence of mind; now you do not even seem to know your own mind. Have patience! Try to live these thoughts, these trifles, down, as you have before overcome great and serious troubles.
Annie had watered her plants, and returning homewards, thought that she would leave her empty pails outside Mat’s door; but when she arrived there, late in the evening, she found the door wide open, papers and accounts being blown about by the wind, whilst a candle was dimly burning in a sheltered corner of the room.
Seeing that the apartment was unoccupied, she stepped in to blow out the candle, when her eye lit upon the old book, “Robinson Crusoe,” which Mat had once before shown her, and, taking it up, she made out on the fly-leaf, written in barely legible round-hand, “From Miss Bell to M. S.,” then the word “Forest;” but all the rest was nearly obliterated. Pinned on to the same page was a fresh sprig of stephanotis.
She was still examining the old volume when an approaching step caused her to shut it hastily, and blow out the candle, so that she might escape unseen; when, turning to leave the room, she found herself seized and held by a strong pair of arms.
“Let me go! Who are you?” she cried, on finding herself thus suddenly captured.
“Oh! Miss Annie, I beg you ten thousand pardons!” said the deep voice of Mat. “I thought I had caught some one pilfering in my room.”