“’Cause you’re too much of a gen’leman, sir, and so would your friend be, or else you wouldn’t have brought him. She needn’t have let out about it, though. I’m lying helpless-like here, and they talk and do just as they like. Was my Judith downstairs, sir?”
“Yes,” said Oldroyd.
“That’s a comfort,” said the man, with a sigh of content. “Young, sir, and very pretty,” he added apologetically, to Alleyne; “makes me a bit anxious about her, don’t you see, being laid-by like. You’ll come and see me again soon, doctor?”
“Yes, and I must soon have a bottle or two of port wine for you. I can’t ask Sir John Day, can I?”
“No, sir, don’t ask he,” said the man, with a faint smile. “Let’s play as fair as we can. If you say I’m to have some wine, we’ll get it; but I’d a deal rayther have a drop of beer.”
“I daresay you would, my friend,” cried Oldroyd, smiling; “but no beer for a long time to come. Alleyne, would you mind going down now, and sending me up the nurse?”
Alleyne rose, and, going down, sent up the woman to find himself alone with the girl of whom they had been speaking.
Student though he was, the study of woman was one that had never come beneath Alleyne’s ken, and he found himself—for perhaps the first time in his life—interested, and wondering how it was that so handsome and attractive a girl could be leading so humble a cottage life as hers.
Judith, too, seemed attracted towards him, and once or twice she opened her lips and was about to speak, but a step overhead, or the movement of a chair, made her shrink away and begin busying herself in arranging chairs or the ornaments upon the chimney-piece, which she dusted and wiped.
“So you’ve been flower-gathering,” said Alleyne, to break a rather awkward silence.