"Oh, I'll pilot her. But she can ride all right, for we used to have great larks when they were out on their ponies, and Leo was always the best of the bunch. It will be fun if I can get her to follow hounds, and the hunt will be awfully obliged to me."
"Don't let any one else—it is your idea, and you ought to have the benefit of it."
"Trust me for that, ma'am," looking very wise. "I've never brought them a subscriber yet, and it would be jolly mean of any one to try to cut me out."
"If it is suggested, you must pooh-pooh the notion."
"How can I though, when I'm thinking of it all the time myself?"
"Leonore might be prevailed upon by you, by an old friend for whom she has a kindly feeling, and on whose judgment she could rely," replied Mrs. Purcell, softly; "while at the same time she would not think nor dream of such a thing if left to herself. And certainly she would resent being approached on the subject by strangers. Therefore it would be quite correct, absolutely correct, to say that no such approach would have a chance of success. You see that, my dear boy?"
He was further instructed that, in order to prepare the ground for his future mission, he was to take an early opportunity of calling at the Abbey, and of being especially respectful and sympathetic in his manner towards poor dear little Leo.
He was to show that as an old friend and playmate he felt for her; and he might, if he saw his way to it, intimate delicately that though he might grieve on her account at her return to dwell among them, he could not do so on his own.
"Well, I can say that, you know," Val brightened up. He did not much like being on the respectful and sympathetic lay, he told himself; he was pretty sure to make a mess of it there;—but if it came to saying he was glad——
"You can't say such a thing, my dear, you can only infer it. You can look it; look kind and—and tender."