"I should have said that you and I were irreproachably proper, Mrs. Cantwell," responded Christian, gaily; "it isn't very kind of you to say that we aren't behaving as we should!" She laughed into Mrs. Cantwell's old face, and she, being quite unused to girls who took the trouble to flirt with her, began to think that Frankie Mangan (thus she designated her nephew, the doctor) was right when he said that the youngest of the Talbot-Lowrys was the best of the bunch.
"Ho! Ho! Ho!" she said, with a laugh like the whinny of an old horse; "it's a long time since I kicked my heels over anything higher than a hearth-rug! But I can tell you, my dear, I was a good warrant for a play-boy when I was your age! There wasn't a young girl, no, nor a young man either, that I couldn't dance down if I gave my mind to it!"
Christian's response was satisfactory, and Mrs. Cantwell, moved to give a sample of her bygone prowess, executed a hippopotamus-like hop and shuffle among the rustling, orange beech leaves of last year.
"Polkas and Mazoorkas!" she exclaimed. "Them was all the go in my time! Come on here, Barty, ye omadhaun! I believe I could dance you off those long legs of yours this minute, if I was to give me mind to it!"
Barty, thus adjured by his great-aunt, drew near. Mrs. Cantwell was not a person to be lightly disobeyed, but his dark eyes were full of apprehension. What might Aunt Bessie not say! She was incalculable, terrible.
There are old people who appear to find an indemnity for their lost youth in permitting to themselves, in dealing with later generations, a scarifying freedom of humour in connection with subjects which once they held sacred (for there are few souls that have not at some time enshrined a tender emotion).
Barty had suffered before now from Aunt Bessy, and he thought that if she made of him an offence to Miss Talbot-Lowry, he would straightway rush into the river and drown himself. Aunt Bessy, however, potentially Rabelaisian though she might be, was perfectly aware of the fact that there is a time to speak and a time to keep silence.
"See here, Barty," she said, "let you go on now, and tell your mother not to be waiting tea for me. I'll take me own time. Tell her never fear I'll turn up, only I like to go me own pace!" She turned to Christian. "Go on you too, my dear; I'm well enough pleased with me own company, and I hate to be delaying you. I'll sit down for a while and admire the scenery."
Thus did Aunt Bessy, as she complacently told herself, watch over the interests of her great-nephew, and though her method was crude, it indisputably achieved its object.
Christian and Barty Mangan walked on in silence that was made companionable by the gurgling whisper of the river behind its screen of hazels and alders; a whisper broken now and again by the tittering laugh of the flying water over a shallow place, like someone with a good story that he cannot quite venture to tell out loud.