“Yes, yes, I know what you’d say. You do your best. But, hang it all, don’t let her mope, and be always indoors. Plenty of time for that when there are half-a-dozen children in the nursery, eh? Coming back my way?”
“No. Oh, no,” cried Rolph, hastily; “I must finish my walk. I shall take a short cut back. Been for a ride?”
“I? Pooh! I don’t go for rides, my lad. I’ve been to see my sheep on the hills, and I’ve another lot to see. There, good-bye till dinner-time, if you won’t come.”
He touched his pony’s ribs and cantered off. Rolph plunging into the wood, and hastily glancing at his watch as he hurried on.
“Lovers are different to what they were when I was a young fellow,” said Sir John. “We were a bit chivalrous and attentive then. Pooh! So they are now. There’s no harm in the lad. It isn’t such a bad thing to keep his body in a state of perfection—real perfection of health and strength. Makes a young fellow moral and pure-minded; but I wish he would devote himself more to Glynne. Take her out more; she looks too pale.”
“Hang him! I wish he had been at Jericho,” muttered the subject of Sir John’s thoughts. “Let’s see, I can keep along all the way in the woods now. I sha’n’t meet any one there.”
The prophecy concerning people held good for a quarter of an hour or so, and then, turning rapidly into an open fir glade, Rolph found out that being prophetic does not pay without a long preliminary preparation, and an ingenious consideration of probabilities and the like, for he suddenly came plump upon the major, stooping down, trowel in hand—so suddenly, in fact, that he nearly fell over him, and the two started back, the one with a muttered oath, the other with words of surprise.
“Why, I didn’t expect to find you in this out-of-the-way place,” said the major.
“By Jove, that’s just what I was going to say,” cried Rolph.
“Not raw beef-steaks this time, is it?” said the major with a grim look full of contempt.