'What is it, mother? Is the man very ill?'
'Very ill, Willie,' she said gently; 'so ill that I don't know yet what we ought to do. I wish father was at home. I must go back now.'
I sat down by the well and waited, watching the door. It seemed a long time that it remained closed, and no one came near me.
At last in the stillness I was glad to hear the well-known heavy knock that Farmer Foster always gave upon the gate with his stick. I went and pulled it back.
I have not said anything yet about Farmer Foster. But Foster of Furzy Nook was a name so well known in those days all round the country that it seems to me as if no one needed to be told about him.
From our windows we could see the twisted chimneys of Furzy Nook farm peeping through the trees. A quaint old-fashioned farm-house, built of red brick, standing in a hollow at the end of a long green lane arched over all the way with trees, that was the pride of the neighbourhood. To go to Furzy Nook for the afternoon had always seemed to me and Hildred the greatest happiness that the world had to offer.
Mother used to live there before she married my father, and the kind old people were almost as fond of her as if she had been a daughter of their own. Farmer Foster was always coming up to the Castle to see her.
I was very glad this afternoon to see the kind face and the gaiters and the shaggy pony looking just the same as usual.
'Well, Willie,' called out the loud cheery tones that sounded very comforting to-day, 'and how's mother?'
Holding on to his stirrup, as he rode slowly in under the archway, I told him all that had happened in the last half hour.