"Sorry to disturb you, I am sure," said a strange voice outside the arbour, followed by the appearance of Miss Elizabeth. "Mr. Tincroft, your most obedient, I am; and am proud to see you so happy. My dear—" this to Sarah—"I just looked over to say how d'ye do, and being told you was in the garden, and expecting to find you alone—" (which was a fib), "just looked in. But I'm aware that two is good company, and three is none; so I will say good afternoon now, and will see you again another day. Mr. Tincroft, when you can find time to give us a look in at Low Beech, father 'll be glad to see you, I am sure; especially considering we may be near relations some of these days."
And before her cousin Sarah could frame a retort, or John could recover his senses (such as they were), Miss Elizabeth was halfway, marching with stately steps, down the filbert alley.
[CHAPTER VII.]
TWO FRIENDS-TWO LETTERS.
WALTER WILSON, having been all day employed with his friend Ralph Burgess, who called himself a civil engineer as well as a surveyor, in theodoliting and chain-dragging over some twenty miles, more or less, of rough stubble country, and having been ordered off more than one farm by gentlemen of the bucolic order, who weren't a-going to have their land cut up by railroads, so they, the hapless intruders, needn't think it, was returning to his quarters, pretty considerably fatigued with his day's work, and out of temper, with no one in particular, but with all in general. And this we take it is the worst, because the most hopeless kind of bad temper in which a man (or woman either) can indulge.
Not that Walter had not some grounds for mental worry, which, however, need not, have bred ill-humour, though it often does, the more is the pity. It was true, as his father had reported of him, that he was getting on in his new business well enough, and was hand and glove with his friend Ralph. But for all that, he was finding it uphill work, and more than sufficiently fatiguing both to mind and body. So that, what was a cause of light-hearted merriment to Ralph Burgess, who had been used to it, considerably chafed poor Walter, who had not. And he, far too often for his peace of mind, compared his present lot with his past, always arriving at the conclusion that a farmer's life was, on the whole, the best life under the sun that a man can lead.
Of course, this brought him to reflect on the immediate cause of what he called his banishment from home. His uncle Mark was the cause of it, there was not a doubt.
"If it had not been for his sottish habits," Walter reflected, "he wouldn't have wanted that money my father threw away upon him; and then I might have had the use of it to take a farm with, and I might, by now, have been comfortably married and settled, instead of slaving about the country in this fashion."
Naturally, these reflections had led him, especially of late, to think of his betrothed with not entire satisfaction. She had not been so attentive to him as she might, could, would, or should have been; so he felt in his heart of hearts. They had been separated now a good many months, and her letters to him had not yet advanced into the "teens," while his to her had made a hole in the "tys." This was not pleasant; at least it was not reciprocal.