‘Out again, Michael! Are you sure?’
‘I’m not very likely to make a mistake about it,’ said the young man, smiling slightly, as he glanced over his list.
‘Well, I do call it too bad, after such a day as you have had. Anybody is better off than a doctor,’ grumbled Roger.
Michael went out, merely remarking that it was all in the day’s work.
It was late before he returned, and during his absence Roger had time to reflect upon the matters they had been discussing earlier.
‘It touched up Michael in some disagreeable way—what the old man said,’ he decided. ‘I wonder what it could be. Surely he has not got a fancy for that girl! What a cursed complication that would be, to be sure! But I’m sure he hasn’t, or if he had, he has will enough to crush it out, quickly. He would never yield to it. What a voice that was in which he spoke of meeting them!... Sometimes I wonder if he ever has any self-reproach when he meets Gilbert on these auspicious occasions. Not likely, I should think. Michael is a good man; and when a good man—a really good man, like him—feels that he has a right to be hard, by George! he does use it with a vengeance. I don’t think it would ever occur to him that Gilbert could have anything to say for himself. And I do fondly hope he has no “feelings” on the subject of this astonishing Miss Askam. It would be too horrible if anything like that were to happen.’
CHAPTER XXII
CROSS-PURPOSES
A few days after this, the subject of the above discussion, the ‘astonishing Miss Askam,’ the new friend of the Johnson family, and the object of Dr. Rowntree’s fervent admiration, returning from a morning visit to the Vicarage, and making her way home by way of the ‘Castle-walk,’ as it was called, found herself a little tired; and as it was a mild and sunshiny day, she seated herself upon a wooden bench which was situated just under the ruin of the great tower, and rested herself, while she watched the flow of Tees, turbid with the late rains, far below her feet.
While she sat there, some one, humming a tune, came round the corner, and Eleanor, glancing at her, beheld the showily dressed little figure of Ada Dixon. Ada had seen Eleanor, too, and she hesitated perceptibly in her walk, a look of expectation and curiosity upon her face.
‘Good morning,’ said Eleanor cheerfully, and did not intend to say any more; but Ada stopped, now that she had a faint excuse for doing so. Eleanor then remembered what had seemed to her the rude treatment bestowed upon the young girl by Otho and Magdalen, on the occasion of her well-remembered visit to Balder Hall, and she decided that a little courtesy might not be out of place here.