“No, no, Richard—Dick, dear, don’t leave me with her; she’ll kill me!” screamed Daisy, frightened by the pale, resolute-looking little woman, who held her so tightly.
“Silence, child!” cried Mrs Glaire.
“Oh, come, let’s have an end of this,” cried Richard.
“I intend to try for an end,” said Mrs Glaire, sharply, “for with you I can make no compact that will not be broken.”
“Oh, if it’s coming to that,” said Richard, sharply, “I shall bring matters to an end.”
“Go, sir! Go home,” said Mrs Glaire, sternly.
“Come, you needn’t bully that poor girl,” said Dick, with a half-laugh; then seeing the hand still pointing down the road, he grew uneasy, fidgeted, and ended by saying—“There, just as you like.”
“Dick, don’t leave me,” gasped Daisy.
“Don’t you be a little silly,” laughed Richard. “She won’t hurt you. I say, mother, you’d better make matters up with Daisy and bring her home, for I think I shall marry her after all.”
“Don’t, don’t leave me, Dick,” whispered Daisy, straining to reach him; but her wrist was tightly clasped, and she sank shivering on the bank by the deep chalk pit, whose side was separated from the lane by a low post and rail fence, beyond which the descent was a sheer precipice of seventy or eighty feet, the old weakened side being dotted with flowers; a place which, as she stood holding Daisy’s wrist still tightly and watching her son till he disappeared down the road, Mrs Glaire remembered to have been a favoured spot in her girlhood for gathering nosegays; and where, more than once, she had met her dead husband in the happy days of her own courtship.