Presently the expression did change. A look of eager expectancy appeared in it as the dark eyes looked up. The unknown man put his watch back in in his pocket, and disappeared quickly from the window.
Chris, who was surprised to find that she had been standing still long enough to grow cold and stiff, moved quickly away from her hiding-place with a flush of shame in her cheeks. A few steps further along the winding path under the trees, on which the decaying leaves lay thickly, brought her out into the kitchen garden. Johnson had finished with his celery and was going into one of the houses to look at his cuttings. He glanced up at her, and she thought she would ask him a question.
“Is Mr. Richard ill, Johnson, do you know?” she said.
“Not as I knows on, miss. At least, not worse nor ordinary,” he said, with a slight gesture of the head to denote where his weakness lay.
“Then why has he got a doctor with him?”
“He ain’t got no doctor with him, not as fur as I knows on, miss.”
“The gentleman with the long grey hair; isn’t he a doctor?”
“Why, no, Miss,” answered Johnson, with a grin; “the gentleman with the long hair is Mr. Richard himself.”
Chris was so much astonished that for a moment she stared at the man and said nothing. Then she repeated, slowly: