“One might do a good deal in that way,” Anthony answered, with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes as he looked at his sister. Any one who had seen him at that moment must have been struck with the extreme boyishness of his appearance. It might have been the curly light brown hair, or, more likely, the slight figure and sloping shoulders, but something there was which had changed but little for the last ten years, and kept him a boy still. Marion looked years older. He was always irritating her by his quick changes, his enthusiasm, his projects for the good of other people. So long as he might have his own way in the doing, there was nothing that he would not have done.
Marion had small sympathy for such notions; she clung to what was her own with a passion and a wilfulness which made her blind to what she would not see, but she did not care to go out of that circle. Yet people said that the brother and sister were alike, and to a certain extent the world’s judgments were correct, as the world’s judgments often are, only that a hundred little things too subtile for so large a beholder made a gulf between the two. He provoked her constantly as he was provoking her now.
“I sometimes think you will end in doing nothing,” she said, walking on quickly.
“So do I, a dozen times a day. Who’s this coming?—isn’t it that fellow Stephens? I’ve a bone to pick with him, I can tell him. What do you suppose he’s after now? He wants Maddox to let him have that bit of ground close by the school to build a chapel upon. I think I see it! Stokes gave me a hint of it, and I’ve been bullying Maddox all the morning, and pretty well got his word for it at last. The canting methodistical rascal! I wish I could see him kicked out of the place.”
Anthony was speaking with great energy. He and Marion were walking through the cool meadows, beyond which lay the softly swelling hills. To the left, a little in front of them, the Hardlands shrubbery gate led into a thin belt of fir-trees, but the path continued through the meadows, until it crossed a small stream, and reached a lane branching from the high road. People liked to turn away from the hard dust and get into these pretty fields, where soft shadows fell gently and the delicate cuckoo flowers grew; and Mr Chester had tacitly suffered a right of way to be established, though he inveighed against it on every occasion. It was a grievance with which he would not have parted for the world, even if his own natural kind-heartedness had not been entirely on the side of the tired wayfarers, and nobody took any notice of it. So that even Anthony’s indignation did not extend itself to the fact that David Stephens was coming towards them along the narrow track.
“I shall go on: Winifred will be wondering what has become of us,” said Marion, who had not sufficiently forgiven her brother to be ready to take his side in the contest. He stood still with his hand on the gate, waiting for Stephens to pass, so determinedly, that the man as he reached the spot stopped at once.
He was much shorter than Anthony, as short, indeed, as an ordinary-sized boy of fourteen, and there was an actual though not very prominent deformity of figure. Yet this warp of nature seldom struck those who fronted him, for the head and face were so powerful and remarkable that they irresistibly seized the attention. Even Anthony, who was as enthusiastic in his prejudices as in his other feelings, was conscious of something in the eyes which checked his first flow of resentment. He would have preferred beginning with a more trenchant opening than—
“Hallo, Stephens, you’re the person I wanted to see.”
“Did you, sir? Well, this is the second time I’ve been to Thorpe to-day.”
“Yes, I know that,” said Anthony, recovering himself, and feeling the words come to him. “I’ve seen Maddox, he’s just been at our house, and what you’re after won’t do at all. Do you suppose my father would stand one of your ranting places stuck up just under his nose? You’d better take yourself off a few miles, for, let me tell you, Thorpe doesn’t want to see you, and you may find it a little hotter residence than you have any fancy for.”