“Are there any nice rides?”
“Just along the roads, you know. But when you get out to Sherwood there are meadows and things–with a brook. That is very fair.”
“Do you still go to Sherwood often? How is Sybil?”
“Yes,” said Ronald, and a blush rose quickly to his face, “I often go there. It is such a queer old place, you know, full of trees and old summer-houses and graveyards–awfully funny.”
“Tell me, Ronald,” said Joe, insisting a little, “how is Sybil?”
“She looks very well, so I suppose she is. But she never goes to anything in Newport; she has not been in the town at all yet, since she went to stay with her uncle.”
“But of course lots of people go out to see her, do they not?”
“Oh, well, not many. In fact I do not remember to have met any one there,” answered Ronald, as though he were trying to recall some face besides Miss Brandon’s. “Her uncle is such an odd bird, you have no idea.”
“I do not imagine you see very much of him when you go out there,” said Joe, with a faint laugh.
“Oh, I always see him, of course,” said Ronald, blushing again. “He is about a hundred years old, and wears all kinds of clothes, and wanders about the garden perpetually. But I do not talk to him unless I am driven to it”–