He stretched out his hand to his wife, and she took it silently. Parents feel old and young when they see the young birds mate.
"Reggie was recommending me to fall in love as quickly as possible, last night," remarked Percy. "He said there was nothing like it."
Mr. Davenport laughed.
"Cheeky young brute," he said. "He gives himself the airs of an old married man. He quite patronised his uncle the other day, because he was a bachelor. He and Gertrude together don't make up more than forty-five years between them."
"Reggie's only just twenty-four," said Mrs. Davenport, "and she's barely twenty. How dreadfully funny their first attempt at housekeeping will be. Reggie never knows what he's eating, as long as there's plenty of it, and I don't think she does either."
"Ah! well, shoulder of mutton and love is a very good diet," said his father. "Are you ready, Percy? If so, we'll be off."
Mrs. Davenport sat a little longer over the fire before she set out on her homeward walk, and observed, with some annoyance, that it had begun to snow heavily, and half wished she had driven home with Reggie. The keeper's wife wanted to send a boy with her, as the short cut across country, which she meant to take, was hardly more than a sheep-track, running across a flat stretch of bleak moorland.
There is, perhaps, nothing so bewildering as a snow-storm. The thick net-work of falling flakes conceals all but the nearest objects; and the small, familiar landmarks of the path are soon lost under the white trouble. The consequence was that, half-an-hour after Mrs. Davenport had started, she was entirely at sea as to her position, and, after trying in vain to retrace her steps, she found herself, at the end of an hour's tedious tramp, at a little cottage some six miles from home. She was known to the labourer who lived there, but, as she was too tired to continue walking through the snow that was already beginning to lie somewhat thickly on the path, he sent out a lad to the neighbouring village to procure any sort of conveyance. All this took time, and Mrs. Davenport was impatient, for the sake of those at home, to get off as soon as possible. Her husband, she knew, would be very anxious; and there were people coming to dinner.
Meanwhile, Reggie and Gertrude had got safely home after a most satisfactory drive. In fact, they rather liked the snow, which compelled them to go slower, for the sake of that sense of extreme privacy—a sort of cutting off from the rest of the world—which it lent them. He had said once, "I am afraid mother will have a horrid walk," and Gertrude was filled with an evanescent compunction for having taken her furs, but no more allusion was made to it.
They reached home about half-past four, and, half-an-hour later, were joined by the shooters, who had given up when the snow began in earnest. They were sitting at tea in the dark, oak-panelled hall, by a splendid fire of logs when Mr. Davenport suddenly said—