Gladys clapped her hands. “You’re a perfect love, uncle!” she cried jubilantly. “I wish I were Lacrima; I’d be ever, ever so nice to you!”
“Ye can be nice to me, as ’tis, sweetheart,” replied the farmer. “You and me have always been kind of fond of each other, haven’t us? But I reckon ye’d best be slipping off now, up to your house. I never care greatly for meeting your father by accident-like. He’s one of these sly ones that always makes a fellow feel squeamy and leery.”
That afternoon it happened that the adventurous Luke had planned a trip down to Weymouth, with a new flame of his, a certain Polly Shadow, whose parents kept a tobacco-shop in Yeoborough.
He had endeavoured to persuade his brother to accompany them on this little excursion, in the hope that a breath of sea-air might distract and refresh him; but James had expressed his intention of paying a visit to his gentle restorer, up at Wild Pine, who was now sufficiently recovered to enable her to sit out in the shade of the great trees.
The church clock had just struck three, when James Andersen approached the entrance to Nevil’s Gully.
He had not advanced far into the shadow of the beeches, when he heard the sound of voices. He paused, and listened. The clear tones of Ninsy Lintot were unmistakable, and he thought he detected—though of this he was not sure—the nervous high-pitched voice of Philip Wone. From the direction of the sounds, he gathered that the two young people were seated somewhere on the bracken-covered slope above the barton, where, as he well knew, there were several shady terraces overlooking the valley.
Unwilling to plunge suddenly into a conversation that appeared, as far as he could catch its purport, to be of considerable emotional tension, Andersen cautiously ascended the moss-grown bank on his left, and continued his climb, until he had reached the crest of the hill. He then followed, as silently as he could, the little grassy path between the stubble-field and the thickets, until he came to the open space immediately above these fern-covered terraces.
Yes, his conjecture had been right. Seated side by side beneath the tall-waving bracken, the auburn-haired Ninsy and her anarchist friend were engaged in an absorbing and passionate discussion. Both of them were bare-headed, and the young man’s hand rested upon the motionless fingers of his companion, which were clasped demurely upon her lap. Philip’s voice was raised in intense and pitiful supplication.
“I’d care for you day and night,” Andersen heard him cry. “I’d nurse you when you were ill, and keep you from every kind of annoyance.”
“But, Philip dear,” the girl’s voice answered, “you know what the doctor said. He said I mustn’t marry on any account. So even if I had nothing against it, it wouldn’t be possible for us to do this.”