Charles Langham, this exception to his kind, stood listening to the sound of their dying footsteps, then turned to his interrupted work with a smile and a sigh.
"And now," said Teddie, looking at his watch, "I must take you back to the station and get on to the office."
Hazel had intended to spend the whole morning with her brother, and probably lunch with him, before she returned to the Traverses: hence her injunctions to Digby to meet her, or cause her to be met, by the 3.50 train. She was, therefore, disappointed; but of this she would let nothing appear. Teddie had already given enough, and too much, of his time at so short a notice.
"Very well," she said cheerfully. "And Teddie—I know it is all right—I shall get the money for my story in time—but, as we have not got it yet, had not it perhaps better be an omnibus?"
To this economical arrangement Teddie—himself less glowingly optimistic than he had been a short while since—agreed. At the station they found, somewhat to their dismay, that there was no train for a couple of hours or so—it was now but little past eleven.
Teddie considered the situation. "Well," he said, "you won't get home till past two o'clock. I had better get you some buns and leave you in the waiting-room. I am awfully sorry, but it cannot be helped. Do you think you will be all right?"
"Perfectly," Hazel returned brightly.
Teddie left her, to return a few minutes later armed with a magazine, and a paper bag containing twelve halfpenny buns.
Left to herself, Hazel began to read; but her mind being preoccupied, she found the stories and jokes uninteresting, and presently fell a-thinking. Was it not near here that her mother's uncle, Percival Desborough, lived? Why should she not utilise the time that must perforce elapse before she could embark upon her return journey by visiting him? Something within her urged her to go, though the prospect was somewhat terrifying. She had heard so much of this uncle's hardness of heart and violence of temper. Poor, lonely old man! how many a time had she wished to see him and judge for herself if he were so hopelessly unamiable and unapproachable as all who knew him averred—all but her mother, who had never lost the belief that there was a soft spot somewhere in the poor, selfish old man's heart.
She had plenty of time, for it would be just as well to take the train by which the Traverses would expect her to arrive—the one after that which Teddie had supposed she would take.