“He is precisely the sort of man my father would have befriended,” said Ralph, warmly. “There was nothing of the Pharisee about him. I remember how when all the village cut a man who had been in prison for some bad offence, he found out the fellow’s one vulnerable point—a love of flowers—and had him up with us at the Rectory the whole of one Bank-holiday, pottering about the garden and greenhouse, and as happy as a king in exchanging plants with us, and helping to bud roses.”
“That may be well enough for a clergyman, but for you—a mere boy, knowing so little of the world—it is different. You ought not to have chosen such a man as your companion.”
“I didn’t choose him,” said Ralph, with some warmth. “An ‘unco guid’ widow shut the door in my face, because I was an actor, and said she only took in Christians. Then at the next place I went to they gave me shelter and kind words, and Dudley was goodness itself to me. If I cut him now I should be a contemptible cad.”
“Well,” said his companion, with a shrug of her shoulders, “you must ‘gang your own gait.’ But remember that I have warned you.”
She turned back soon after this, and Ivy, who had thought the whole discussion very tiresome, skipped for joy when a bend in the road hid her from view.
But Ralph seemed unusually silent, and as they looked at the ruins of the old abbey, Ivy could not at all understand the shadow that seemed to have come over his face.
Not a word ever passed Dudley’s lips about his previous life, but there were not lacking people who promptly told him that Ralph Denmead had just learnt all about it; and when they moved on to Ayr, he said in his blunt way:
“You’ll not care that we should pig together any longer, I daresay?”
“I had much rather share diggings with you than with any of the others,” said Ralph, heartily. “If I’m not in your way, that is? You are the only man who has shown me the least kindness.”
Dudley made an inarticulate exclamation. He was more touched than he would have cared to own.