The man held up horny hands of protest.
“Bless your heart! Mr. Wadhurst, you musn’t take me up like that,” he cried. “I meant nought more’n or’nary remark. I’d be the last man in Framsby to hint at ought being wrong; I would indeed, sir, as I hope you know. I’ve all’ays said that in this case it is the man that’s the really lucky one, and I don’t care who knows it, Mr. Wadhurst.”
Mr. Wadhurst gave a searching glance at the man, and then left the shop. He was not quite satisfied with the explanation which the man had given him of his use of that very ordinary phrase. “Nothing wrong—nothing wrong—we hope there’s nothing wrong”—the words buzzed about him all the time he was walking down the High Street. “Nothing wrong!” Why, what could there be wrong? What could there be wrong? What sort of gossip was going about? Who had been saying that anything was wrong?
He went down the street to where his dogcart was waiting for him, and mounting to his seat, drove off in the direction of the farm; but before he had gone more than half a mile along the road he turned his horse about, and drove quickly back to Framsby. He pulled up at the post office, and, descending, entered the place and, after a considerable amount of thought, composed and wrote out a telegram.
Then he mounted his dogcart and drove off to his farm.
CHAPTER XXI
It was barely ten o’clock the next morning when Mrs. Wingfield, telling her maid that she felt that this was going to be one of her good days, got her seat moved out of the shady part of the terrace into the region of the fitful sunlight that had followed a liquid dawn. The day was a grey one, with lazy pacing clouds very high up in the air; and the occasional glimpses of tempered brilliance which the land was allowed between the folds of the billowy vapour, were very grateful to the lady. She had letters and a book and a writing-case.
She had scarcely settled herself down among her cushions before she heard the sound of wheels on the carriage drive—she could not have heard it if her chair had remained on the shady part of the terrace. Then came the sound of a man’s voice—imperative—insistent—set off by the murmured replies of the butler. The insistence became more insistent, and the replies louder—more staccato. Then the butler appeared on the terrace.