“For a man or woman to be without occupation is so uninteresting, to say the least of it,” continued his mentor, “that I would rather break stones on the road.”
He was silent, hardly hearing. He was looking at the round softness of her cheek, and wondering whether many men felt as miserable as he. Swiftly before his eyes rose a vision of Claudia wandering about the park at Huntingdon with Captain Fenwick by her side, and he straightened himself with something so like a groan that he glanced hurriedly at the girl, fearing to have annoyed her. But she was looking straight before her, relieved to see Helen Arbuthnot strolling towards them from the grass ride.
“At least ten people are crying out for you,” was her greeting to Harry. “Your mother, and your mother’s maid, and the mother of the footman, and a sick bailiff. These are the most importunate, but there are five others dancing round. He must go,” she went on to Claudia, “but if you really have an idle moment to spare, you might bestow it on me. I collect other people’s.”
Claudia did not much care for Miss Arbuthnot, whom, with some reason, she suspected of ridiculing her, but at this minute she would have joyfully jumped at any means of escape.
“Was that why you came to Thornbury?” she asked bluntly.
“Was it? I don’t know; and I never answer questions, because they recall acrostics. Come back to the grass ride.” The grass ride remained unchanged. A broad strip of turf, and on either side tall slender trees springing from a wavy undergrowth of bracken; a ride shady through the hottest summer, yet with the sun filtering down sufficiently to fling broken lights on the close cool grass. Miss Arbuthnot stood still as they reached it, and looked in either direction. “It is an enchanting spot,” she said.
“Ye-e-s,” agreed Claudia doubtfully.
“But it might be tremendously improved.”
“I dare say. I hate improvements, whether in people or places. They destroy sentiment.”
Up jumped Claudia on her stilts. “I can’t understand any one not wishing for the best.”