Chapter Seven.
Father and Son.
The road from the vicarage to the village and station beyond passed within a hundred yards or so of the pond; but from the latter being situated in a hollow and the meadows surrounding it inclosed within a hedge of thick brushwood, it could only be seen by those passing to and fro from one point—where the path began to rise above the valley as it curved round the spur of the down.
It was Saturday also, when, as Teddy well knew, his father would be engaged on the compilation of his Sunday sermon, and so not likely to be going about the parish, as was his custom of an afternoon, visiting the sick, comforting the afflicted, and warning those evil-doers who preferred idleness and ale at the “Lamb” to honest toil and uprightness of living; consequently the young scapegrace was almost confident of non-interruption from any of his home folk, who, besides being too busy indoors to think of him, were ignorant of his whereabouts. It was also Jupp’s heaviest day at the station, so he couldn’t come after him he thought; and he was enjoying himself to his heart’s content, when as the Fates frequently rule it, the unexpected happened.
Miss Conny, now a tall slim girl of thirteen, but more sedate and womanly even than she had been at ten, if that were possible, was occupied in the parlour “mending the children’s clothes,” as she expressed it in her matronly way, when she suddenly missed a large reel of darning cotton. Wondering what had become of it, for, being neat and orderly in her habits, her things seldom strayed from their proper places, she began hunting about for the absent article in different directions and turning over the piles of stockings before her.
“Have you seen it?” she asked Liz, who was sitting beside her, also engaged in needlework, but of a lighter description, the young lady devoting her energies to the manufacture of a doll’s mantilla.
“No,” said Liz abstractedly, her mouth at the time being full of pins for their more handy use when wanted, a bad habit she had acquired from a seamstress occasionally employed at the vicarage.
“Dear me, I wonder if I left the reel upstairs,” said Conny, much concerned at the loss; and she was just about prosecuting the search thither when Cissy threw a little light on the subject, explaining at once the cause of the cotton’s disappearance.