Phil affected more assurance than he felt, however, as they dismounted before the door of the inn at Wyntown. ‘Heaven send Shepley is not here before us!’ he thought as he lifted Carrie down and gave the horses to the ostler.
‘We shall come up-stairs and dine, Carrie,’ he said. ‘Do you not feel as though you were my wife already?’ He drew Carrie’s rather limp little hand through his arm as he spoke, and they went up-stairs to the inn parlour, which overlooked the courtyard.
‘You are wearied, I fear, Carrie,’ he said.
‘Hot wearied, Phil, in the least, but not very happy,’ said Carrie, with a stifled sob.
Phil affected deafness, and requested the landlady to bring up dinner as quickly as might be. ‘For I am near famished with the morning air, Mistress Heathe,’ said he, with a smile to the good woman, an old acquaintance, ‘and so is this lady also; but she is somewhat weary, so see no stranger comes in while we are here.’
‘Just as you please, sir; just as you please,’ said Mistress Heathe, as she bustled round the table, and made bold to ask for his father’s health.
‘The same I did serve with a bottle of wine yesterday at this very hour. “Bad roads they are to-day, Mistress Heathe,” said he, for your father, sir, is ever so affable in the passing by, ’tis a pleasure serving such gentry as he, to be sure.’ And she gave a curious squint at Carrie meanwhile.
That young woman made a show of eating a little, but in truth it was Phil who cleared off the viands, and Lady Mallow would have been quite pleased by the genteel appetite of her niece, if she could have seen how she toyed with a scrap of chicken, and shook her head at sight of an apple tart.
‘I am sorry, Phil, I cannot eat,’ she said, ‘and somehow I cannot talk either, so perhaps we had best not try to talk.’
‘Never fear, Carrie; ’twill be all right soon,’ said Phil, and he crossed over to the window and sat there looking out into the yard.