"Nonsense, he is shamming, he is as cunning as a fox!' she exclaimed; but it was as the groom said, for Derval's head drooped on his breast and he hung on the rope like a dead weight, while no motion was made by him.
"Untie him; dear me, I had no idea of this," said Mrs. Hampton, becoming suddenly alarmed, while the groom released the passive hands of Derval, and tenderly carried him into the stable-yard, where the fresh air fanned his face, which was now bathed with cold water from a fountain into which Mrs. Hampton dipped her cambric handkerchief.
"He will revive in a few minutes," said she, becoming certainly still more alarmed at the pallor of his face and seeing that his eyes remained closed.
"Lord, mum," said the groom, who rather enjoyed her growing terror, "I hope we won't be having a crowner's 'quest in the house!"
"Fool!" said she, darting an angry look at the speaker, and then applying her little bottle of aromatic vinegar to Derval's nostrils. He revived, however, rapidly, put his jacket on, and walked sullenly but unsteadily away.
For the first time in her life she feared her husband—was glad of his absence, and hoped that Derval's back, which she anointed when he was sound asleep, would bear no trace of what he had undergone when Greville Hampton returned.
"Flogged like a black nigger for poodling a dirty cat—my eyes!" was the comment of the groom, when relating the episode in the kitchen; and poor old Patty Fripp wept tears of rage when she heard of it.
Derval's back was still stiff and painful, and his tender wrists were excoriated, when his father returned a day or two after, but the idea of complaining about what he had undergone never occurred to him; in fact, he was too much accustomed to systematic ill-usage now.
He longed to be old enough to run away and be a soldier or a sailor—he cared not which—and he would sit by his mother's grave brooding over such thoughts, till led away by Mr. Asperges Laud, or found by Patty Fripp.
As he grew older he became painfully conscious, however, of the different treatment of his younger brother and himself; he saw how he was permitted to go threadbare and shabby, with tattered cap and seamy boots, while little Rookleigh—or Rook as he called him—was kept like a princeling in purple and fine linen, and all the while their father seemed careless or oblivious of the difference.