While they were at tea Carry asked, “Do you think you should know the gentleman again if you met him, father?”
“Yes, my dear, I am nearly sure that I should.”
“What was he like, father?” Carry asked, “do try and think what he was like.”
“He was a young man of four or five and twenty, I should say, and he seemed tall to me, and he must have been as strong as a giant, for he picked me up as easily as you would a kitten.”
“Was he good-looking, father?” Carry asked, a little shyly, this time.
“I should say he was, my dear; but my head was in such a swim that I did not notice much about his face; but I certainly think he was good-looking. There, my dear, there is some one just come into the shop.”
After this several customers came in, and Carry was pretty well occupied for the rest of the evening. She did not renew the subject of her father’s preserver. Stephen Walker lit a long pipe and smoked thoughtfully beside the fire. Once or twice he went into the shop, but he was not of much use to Carry, and received orders to sit quiet and smoke his pipe, for that he had given her quite anxiety enough for one day. At ten o’clock the shop was shut, and they went up to bed, Stephen Walker to sleep fitfully, waking up with great starts, under the idea that the omnibus wheels were passing over his body. Carry lay awake for a long time, trying to picture to herself her father’s preserver, and wondering whether he would ever come to see them.
CHAPTER IV.
THE OWNERS OF WYVERN HALL.
Frank Maynard and Arthur Prescott, after leaving Stephen Walker standing bewildered upon the pavement, did not pursue their way along Knightsbridge, but turned at once into Lowndes Square. They walked the length of this, and stopped at one of the three or four houses which form the end of the square, or rather oblong. It belonged to Captain Bradshaw, Frank’s uncle, with whom the young men were going to dine.
Harry Bradshaw was the younger of two brothers, sons of Reginald Bradshaw, of Wyvern Park, in Oxfordshire. It was a fine property. Indeed, there were not many finer in the county—with its noble old mansion, its wide park, and its stately trees—and had been in the family for centuries. During all this time—if tradition is to be believed—the Bradshaws had been a hearty, honest, hard-riding, and deep-drinking race; and Reginald did not belie his ancestry, but drank as deeply and rode as hard as the best of them could have done.