“Bless you!” he exclaimed fervently.
But she declined to answer his definite question about giving up the army.
“You might be wanted there, Lionel. You are a keen soldier. If there should be war?”
The talk drifted to India. Presently Lionel went back to the Hall.
He was a prey to conflicting emotions, chewing a bitter-sweet cud. Three conclusions were in his mind: Joyce’s friendship for him had not diminished; she had lain awake trying to solve his problems; in her kind eyes he had read sympathy and affection. That was the pleasant first conclusion. The others, as convincing to him, were not so palatable. She had repeated Moxon’s words. His ipsissima verba. Joyce was not a phrase-maker, although she talked well and to the point. Does any woman listen attentively to any man unless she is interested in him? Obviously Lionel was too modest and too dense (as the Parson had divined) to consider the possibility of a girl listening, keenly alert, to talk that might profit another man. Lastly, when speaking of Moxon, she had blushed! She wanted him to come back, and he would come back, this clever, able fellow, to turn a doubtful “No” into a glad “Yes.”
With an effort he left Joyce and Moxon standing together at the altar.
He harked back to his own affairs doggedly. What could he do? A talk with Fishpingle might help.
He found that encyclopædia of rural knowledge in his room, still busy with Pomfret accounts, spectacles on nose. Fishpingle greeted him joyously. The rain had stopped, and the river would be in fine order. Master Lionel, of course, wanted his rod, a split-cane affair built by a famous maker, which the old man guarded jealously. But Lionel sat down and refilled his pipe, which had gone out during his conversation with Joyce. Being a “thruster,” like his father, he rode straight at the big fence—
“Ought I to chuck the service?”