“Indeed!”
“Yes[“Yes], indeed. So I do wish you would work, in you must work, under the hedge, or behind that plot of hollyoaks. Do you know I saw you stop and take off your cap, when you came to the end of this ridge, and then stoop——”
“What! while your head was full of your father[father]; bless you!” murmured Walter, in a low fone[fone], and with a blush of satisfaction.
“Is not it my duty to think of you first?” asked Effie; “and if it was not, how could I help it?”
Walter was in no hurry to answer this, and Effie went on.
“As to saying it, I cannot help that either; and why should I? It makes me wonder to see Bessy Davison pretending that her lover is the last person in the world that she thinks of or cares about, when she knows what a sin and shame it would be to pretend the same thing when he is her husband—which he is almost—for they are to be married next week.”
“I am sure we are much more like being husband and wife than they are, Effie; I wish we were going to be married next week.”
“I cannot talk about that, Walter, till I have heard something of my father, and made out what is to become of my mother, if he is really gone; but he may get back. There have been some set ashore again two days after they were carried off.”
Walter did not say what he knew, that those who were thus returned to their homes were persons unfit for the king’s service:—a poor tailor who might, by long training, have become a sail-maker, but would never be capable of more arduous service; a ploughman, who was gaping with amazement at the first sight of the sea, when he was surprised and carried off; and a pedlar, who seemed likely to die in a week for want of a wider walking range than the deck of a tender. Eldred was too good a man for the king’s purposes, as Walter knew, to be set at liberty again on the same footing with such helpless creatures as these.
“What will your mother do, Effie, if your father should really be away a year or two, or more?”