Bryda sighed as she read these words, and Jack was touched. He had been cross-grained, he knew, but nevertheless he would gladly have got the Squire at that moment in his hands and thrashed him without mercy.
'That's all in the letter,' Bryda said. 'There's only love and kisses, and a few words written below to say grandfather had eaten a good supper and was more like himself for this good news.'
'It's all very well,' Jack said, 'but it seems to me if the Squire gets the money at Easter he might as well have it now. What's the odds?'
'Oh, Jack, they will have the winter to look about them. It does make a difference.'
'Well,' Jack said, 'I would not trust that man. He has got some reason for this, depend on it.'
But poor Jack dare not trust himself to ask what that reason might be. His was a mind slow to reach any conclusion. He was filled with a subtle uneasiness as to what might be the relations between Bryda and the Squire, and yet he dared not come to the point and ask the plain question. Bryda would resent it, and he might lose what was so precious to him—the Sunday walks and the sight of her who was the light of his eyes. He only repeated,—
'He has got some reason, I'll warrant.'
'Kindness to an old man of seventy-six years is not that a reason enough to please you,' Bryda said, and then she added, 'I must go back to the parlour now. Mrs Lambert will awake and be angry if I am not at hand. Good-bye, Jack, good-bye. I hope it will be fair weather next Sunday, and then we'll go to the Redcliffe Meadows again. Good-bye.'
Jack turned away sorrowful and uneasy, determined to watch the movements of the Squire and question Chatterton about him. 'And yet I should not like to act spy to her,' he sighed, as he went out into the relentless rain, which pattered on his best Sunday coat and dimmed the glory of the large gilt buttons with moisture.
In a city like Bristol, then as now, many stories of love and hatred, of vain aspirations and blighted hopes, are told out, of which the passer-by in the busy streets knows nothing.