“That’s right. They’re both cross to-day; they’ll make it up to-morrow.”
“Fred!” said Colonel Forrester over his shoulder as he rode off.
“Coming, father. Good-bye, Scar; and, I say, don’t tell anybody about the secret place just yet.”
“Very well.”
“It will be all right again directly. Father soon gets good-tempered again after he has been cross; but it always makes him angry if anybody praises up the king.”
“Fred!”
“Coming, father.”
The boy darted off after the departing horseman, and Scarlett sat watching them till they disappeared among the trees, when he went slowly into the house, catching sight of his father striding up and down in the dining-room, and with a more serious look in his face than he remembered to have seen before.
“I hope there is not going to be trouble and fighting, the same as there has been elsewhere,” thought the boy; and he involuntarily glanced through the open hall-door at the beautiful landscape, across which seemed to float visions of soldiers and burning homesteads, and destruction such as had been brought to them in the shape of news from far distant parts.
The coming of his father roused him from his reverie.