As if to enforce her words, the street-door, which, I suppose, William had not shut properly, burst open with a bang against the wall, and the wind went shrieking through the house, as if in triumph at having forced an entrance.
"The woman is in labour," said Harry in reply to Adela, forgetting, in the stern reality both for the poor woman and himself, that girls of Adela's age and social position are not accustomed to hear such facts so plainly expressed, from a man's lips. Adela, however, simply accepted the fact, and replied:
"But you will be too late anyhow."
"Perhaps just in time," he answered, as his brother entered with a coat over his arm.
"Ralph," he went on, with a laugh, "they are trying to persuade me not to go."
"It is a tempting of Providence," said Mrs. Bloomfield.
"Harry, my boy," said the curate solemnly, "I would rather have you brought home dead to-morrow, than see you sitting by that fire five minutes after your mare comes. But you'll put on a great-coat?"
"No, thank you. I shall do much better without one. How comical I shall look in Farmer Prisphig's Sunday clothes! I'm not going to be lost this storm, Mrs. Bloomfield; for I second-see myself at this moment, sitting by the farmer's kitchen fire, in certain habiliments a world too wide for my unshrunk shanks, but doing my best to be worthy of them by the attention I am paying to my supper."
Here he stooped to Lizzie and whispered in her ear:
"Don't let them make a fuss about my going. There is really no particular danger. And I don't want my patient there frightened and thrown back, you know."