“Feyther!” said Mat, indignantly, entreatingly. Then he was dumb, for even through his not over-bright brains came a suspicion that this accident was perhaps not wholly unexpected by one of its witnesses.
As this brief scene passed between father and son, a man in a short frieze coat, knickerbockers, gaiters, and deer-stalker cap, who had quickened his pace down the hill into a run on seeing the accident, looked full into the faces of both men with a keen, shrewd expression as he dashed by.
“It’s parson Brander, o’ S’ Cuthbert’s, feyther. He heeard thee,” said the young man in a husky, awed whisper.
“An’ wha not? Ah’d loike to see sik as him say a word to me!” said the farmer, in a loud voice of boastful contempt.
And the attitudes respectively of father and son, the one of contemptuous disgust, the other of awestruck respect, represented the two views most commonly taken in the country-side of the Reverend Vernon Brander, vicar of Saint Cuthbert’s.
Before the last disdainful word was out of John Oldshaw’s mouth, the new comer had opened the cab door, and extricated the two girls from their unpleasant position. The maid was uppermost, but she was a little creature, and had probably inflicted far less inconvenience on her more massively built mistress than that young lady would have inflicted on her had their positions been reversed. Her rosy cheeks had lost their color, and from her forehead, which had been cut by the broken glass of the carriage window, blood was trickling down.
In answer to the gentleman’s inquiries as to whether she was hurt, she said in a trembling voice that she didn’t know yet, and begged him to get her mistress out. This he at once proceeded to do, and was rewarded by the thanks of a young lady whom he at once decided to be one of the handsomest girls that this or any other country ever produced.
Olivia Denison was indeed an unchallenged beauty, and had occupied that proud position almost ever since, twenty years ago, she had been pronounced to be “a lovely baby.” She was tall—of that cruel height which forces short admirers, on pain of looking ridiculous, to keep their distance; of figure rather massive than slender, with a fair skin, a fresh color, dark hair, blue eyes, and a winning expression of energy and honesty which gave to the whole face its greatest charm. For the moment, however, the rose color had left her cheeks, too, and her lips were drawn tightly together.
“You are hurt, I am afraid,” said the stranger, with concern.
“I’ve only—pinched—my finger,” she answered, trying to laugh.