“There! now don’t stir till I return,” said the Vicar. “I will go home and bid Mrs. Durdle prepare the room, and bring Zachary back with me, as soon as may be. And you little people, let Mistress Hilary know if anyone comes in sight.”
“Ay, sir,” said the children, curtseying.
“You are like two good little watchmen,” he added, smiling and patting their heads. “See that you don’t fall asleep at your posts, for the sun is hot. Now,”—he thought to himself with a humorous gleam in his eyes—“if Hilary and her lover do not patch up their ancient quarrel I shall wish I had sent her on this errand instead of going myself.”
CHAPTER XL.
“Duelling, in this country at least, is no longer legal, and we believe that war, which has been aptly styled international duelling, is alike doomed.. . . It is certain that the time must assuredly come (for is not this the darkness before the dawn?), and it will be probably sooner than we can conceive, when there will be a tremendous upheaval and revulsion of feeling with regard to it.” —J. J. Green.
For some little time Gabriel lay back in perfect silence against the grassy bank, and, spite of the acute pain he was in, he nevertheless felt ready to echo the children’s chorus which floated to them from beneath the apple trees—For it is now a holiday.
Hilary sat on the grass beside him, and from time to time he opened his eyes to watch the tender womanly hand as it ministered to his needs, or to look into the sweet face, as it bent over him. He realised, too, with a happy sense of homecoming, that he was indeed in his native county every time he caught sight of the lovely Malvern Hills which, in the morning light, seemed to take all the hues to be seen on a pigeon’s neck, and formed a fitting background for Hilary’s rare beauty.
“Ought I to let you do all this for a ‘friendly foe’?” he said, looking up at her with a hint of the old mirth in his eyes.