“But, darling, I couldn’t, I had no opportunity, and I could not leave Wyvern, where he had been so good to me all my life, without a few words to thank him, and to entreat his pardon; you’re not angry, darling, with your poor little bird?”
“Angry, my foolish little wife, you little know your Ry; he loves his bird too well to be ever angry with her for anything, but it was unlucky, at least his getting it just when he did, for, you may suppose, it did not improve his temper.”
“Very angry, I’m afraid, was he? But though he’s so fiery, he’s generous; I’m sure he’ll forgive us, in a little time, and it will all be made up; don’t you think so?”
“No, darling, I don’t. Take this hill quietly, will you?” he called from the window to the driver; “you may walk them a bit, there’s near two miles to go still.”
Here was another anxious look out, and he drew his head in, muttering, and then he laid his hand on hers, and looked in her face and smiled, and he said—
“They are such fools, aren’t they? and—about the old man at Wyvern—oh, no, you mistake him, he’s not a man to forgive; we can reckon on nothing but mischief from that quarter, and, in fact, he knows all about it, for he chose to talk about you as if he had a right to scold, and that I couldn’t allow, and I told him so, and that you were my wife, and that no man living should say a word against you.”
“My own brave Ry; but oh! what a grief that I should have made this quarrel; but I love you a thousand times more; oh, my darling, we are everything now to one another.”
“Ho! never mind,” he exclaimed with a sudden alacrity, “there he is. All right, Tom, is it?”
“All right, sir,” answered the man whom he had despatched before them on the horse, and who was now at the roadside still mounted.
“He has ridden back to tell us she’ll have all ready for our arrival—oh, no, darling,” he continued gaily, “don’t think for a moment I care a farthing whether he’s pleased or angry. He never liked me, and he cannot do us any harm, none in the world, and sooner or later Wyvern must be mine;” and he kissed her and smiled with the ardour of a man whose spirits are, on a sudden, quite at ease.