Her tears flowed afresh at the question. This time he wiped them away himself. "Oh, I'm afraid I couldn't be that," she said. "I never could. But I'll promise not to run away before you come back."
She is a brave little soul after all, he thought, as he waved his hand, and hurried off to the stable; but that is a woman's courage—cry one moment and make a joke the next.
Mrs. Dunlop, who was not as far distant from home as her son had supposed, entered the house a few minutes after his departure, followed by the servant, both bearing great baskets of raspberries. The two women were sufficiently astonished at sight of the unexpected and most unfortunate guest; but Allan's mother would scarcely allow Rose to pronounce a word of her penitent confession. It was enough for her to know that here was an opportunity for her to relieve suffering, and she improved it with characteristic tact and delicacy. The open-eyed and open-mouthed maid was sent on various small missions of mercy, which she attacked with zeal, in the hope that thereby in some way her abounding thirst for information might be assuaged.
Very soon after, the quiet farm-house became the rendezvous of an unusual number of strangers. Helene and Edward, who had returned to see if Allan could tell them anything concerning the whereabouts of the missing girl, came first. Helene, full of grief and contrition because she had not remained by the side of Rose through the entire length of her perilous undertaking, and Edward, whose brotherly sympathy was tinged by the magnanimous consciousness that nothing would tempt him to remind her that he had warned her of the evil which had resulted in her downfall. Afterwards came the physician who set the broken arm, and forbade the patient's removal, and then the Commodore, in whose brawny neck his daughter hid a wet, pitiful face.
"It was my fault, Papa," she whispered, "and it's a miracle I'm not broken up into more pieces than I am. I deserve to be. I'm as full of penitence as I am of pain. But don't you be troubled about me. Mrs. Dunlop is as good and kind as it is possible to be. I am sure they are very nice people."
Very nice people perhaps, but very little to the Commodore's taste. As he turned to greet the man, upon whose hospitality his daughter had been so literally and unexpectedly thrown, he was scarcely his frank, genial, outspoken self. There was a secret root of prejudice against this unpretending farmer, whose son's political views were as far from his own as the east is from the west, and whose social position was decidedly inferior. Not that the kindly Commodore was gifted with that microscopic eye which is too easily impressed by the infinitesimal gradations of society, but he retained too much of the Old World feeling for class distinctions to make him oblivious to the difference in their rank.
"Good heavens! Edward," he exclaimed, in a conversation with his son a few days after the accident, "what uncommonly low ground our little Rose has been suddenly transplanted to. That old farmer looks as stiff and straight as one of his own furrows, and his son, what's-his-name? is of the same mould."
"It's remarkably rich mould, Father. Not such low ground as one might think."
"Rich! What, in dollars and cents?"
"No; better than that. In knowledge and sense. Allan Dunlop is a very bright fellow."