Bill knelt upright a minute or two, to look after him; then he proceeded to lay himself out flat on the bank, feet furthest from the edge, and set to work washing out the pockets in the river.
[CHAPTER IX.]
RENEWING ACQUAINTANCE.
ELSPETH fully anticipated the honour of giving lunch to this strange artist, for whom Bill had borrowed the chair. It was a good step up to the public house by the church; and common sense told her that a shelter so near at hand, where he could rest and eat, would be a convenience not to be despised.
Accordingly, she laid forward with her work, in order to be ready to do the honours of a cold-meat spread any time after eleven o'clock, by which hour she counted he might reasonably be getting hungry. As fortune would have it, however, she was doomed to disappointment.
Setting out about half-past nine for a walk his grandsons, the Squire with Hal at his side, arrived at the stile beyond the Manor Farm, intending to proceed by way of the riverbank and the fields to the church, and thence to the gate of the wood, to see how Farmer Bluff's place of exile was progressing.
Will and Sigismund were quickly over; and whilst Hal and the old gentleman were following at leisure, on they ran as usual. They no sooner disappeared beyond the corner where the path curved round the orchard than they came racing back.
"Such an odd object!" cried Will, in his clear, sharp voice. "A man under a white canvas umbrella!"
"Like a missionary teaching the heathen," put in Sigismund; for the equinoctial sun was in one of its rare hot moods, and our artist had been glad to screen his eyes from its glare.