“Why, of course we will, Mr Fred Denville; of course we will. There, don’t you make yourself uneasy about them.”
“I won’t,” said Fred, in his bluff, straightforward way. “I may be quite happy, then, about Claire?”
“To be sure you may.”
“I shouldn’t like her to suffer any more, and it would be terrible for those wretched dandy scoundrels to get hold of her and break her heart.”
“Don’t you fidget yourself about that, young man,” said Mrs Barclay with quite a snort. “Your dear sister’s too proud for any jack-a-dandy fellow to win her heart.”
“You’re a good woman,” said Fred softly. “I’m not much account as a man, but I know a good woman when I meet one, and I wish I’d had such a one as you by me when I was a boy. If I had, I shouldn’t have been a common soldier now. Good-bye, ma’am; good-bye, sir. Heaven bless you both.”
He hurried out, afraid of showing his emotion, and Mrs Barclay turned round wiping her eyes.
“There, Jo-si-ah, you see everybody don’t think ill of us, bad as we are.”
“Humph! no,” said Barclay thoughtfully; “but I don’t understand that chap—he’s so strange. Why, surely, old girl, he had no hand in that murder.”
“Lor’! Jo-si-ah, don’t! You give me the creeps all over. I do wish you wouldn’t think about murders and that sort of thing. You give me quite a turn. I wouldn’t have my dear Claire hear you for the world.”