“You’re half frozen with standing in the cold (a very just penalty for eavesdropping, by the way), and you’ll be half buried before you get back. I must see you home.”
“Oh, no, indeed, I’m not going to drag you all that way on a day like this.”
“But I choose to be dragged. You rash young woman, accustomed to the peaceful security of Streatham; you must learn that it is not safe for a young lady to tramp about this part of the world alone so late in the day.”
“But it’s not late.”
“It will be dark before you get home. Go on up the hill, and I will fetch my mackintosh and overtake you.”
He went into his bare-looking house while Olivia tramped on obediently. She had not noticed, until then, how thickly the snowflakes were falling, nor how the gloom of the leaden sky was deepening. Now, too, she became aware, for the first time, that her jaws were stiff, and her hands and feet bitterly cold; for the interview with Mr. Brander had been too exciting to allow her to notice these things. He overtook her in a very few minutes, and walked by her side, conversing on different topics, until that scene by the churchyard scarcely seemed a reality. They passed only one person, a rough-looking collier of unsteady gait, whom Mr. Brander made use of to point a moral.
“Now, is that the sort of person you would care to meet if you were alone?” he asked.
“I shouldn’t have been afraid of him,” answered Olivia.
“No; if he had been sober he would have been vastly afraid of you, and of most girls I should say. So he is when he’s drunk. But your courage doesn’t want stimulating; it wants repressing. For I tell you my collier boys are good lads in the main, but there are black sheep among them as among other folk, and you mustn’t risk falling in with one towards nightfall on a lonely road. Do you hear?”
He spoke with playful peremptoriness, but Olivia understood that he was giving a serious warning, which she promised to heed. He went on talking about the colliers, who formed the bulk of the inhabitants of his scattered parish, with affectionate interest which awakened a sympathetic curiosity in her, until they reached the inn at the entrance of Rishton village. Mr. Brander had grown so warm over what Olivia afterwards discovered to be his favorite subject that, quite unconsciously, his steps, and consequently hers, had grown slower and slower, while his voice grew more and more eager until a passer-by would have taken them for a pair of lovers reluctant to separate. They had come to a complete standstill in the farmyard by the corner of the house, when they heard the opening of the front door, a man’s footstep, and then a woman’s strong shrill voice——