“’Zaggerate,” said the old man, laughing. “Well, perhaps he does. But come, girl, get in a bit of lunch. There, what now, Miss Pelly; are we frightening you away?”
“Oh, no,” said Eve, smiling, “only I must go now.”
“Sit thee down, lass, sit thee down. Parson’s going back directly, and he’ll walk wi’ thee and see thee safe home.”
And so it came about that innocently enough an hour afterwards the vicar and Eve Pelly were walking back together with, as they came in sight of Richard Glaire, Eve eagerly speaking to her companion, and becoming so earnest in her pleading words for her cousin, that she laid one little hand on the vicar’s arm.
“You will like him when you come to know him, Mr Selwood,” she was saying, in her earnest endeavour that Richard should be well thought of by everybody. “Poor boy, he has been so annoyed and worried over the strike, that he is not like the same. It is enough to make him cross and low-spirited, is it not?”
“Indeed it is,” said the vicar, quietly; “and you may be quite at rest with respect to your cousin, for he will, for he will always find a friend in me.”
He had been about to say, “for your sake,” but a glance at the sweet, candid face arrested his words, and he told himself that anything that would in the slightest degree tend to disturb her pure faith and belief in the man who was to be her husband would be cruelty, for there was the hope that her gentle winning ways and innocent heart would be the means of influencing Richard Glaire, and making him a better man.
“Hallo, you two!” made them start, as Richard leaped over the stile, and seemed surprised to find that neither of them looked startled or troubled at his sudden apparition. “Here, Eve, take my arm. I’m going home.”
“Thank you, Dick,” she said, quietly. “I have something to carry.”
He scowled and relapsed into a moody silence, which no efforts on the vicar’s part could break. Fortunately, the distance back to the town was very short, and so he parted from them at the foot of the High street, the rest of the distance being occupied by Richard in a torrent of abuse of Eve, and invectives against the vicar, whom he characterised as a beggarly meddling upstart, and ended by sending the girl up to her room in tears.