"A deep brand," he said, and that was all.
He was watching his own child, who was staring at the intruder with looks of keenest interest. She had left off crying, and was crawling assiduously towards the baby-waif, whom Barbara Layburne had set down upon the floor a little way off. The two infants crawled to each other like two puppies, and climbed and tumbled over each other just as young animals might have done, obeying instinct rather than reason.
Presently the little lady uplifted her voice and crowed aloud, and then began to talk after her fashion, which was backward, as of a child brought up amidst gloom and silence.
"Gar, gar, gar!" she reiterated, in a gurgling monotone.
The other baby looked about her, and murmured piteously, "Dada, dada!" and seeing not him whom she sought, she began to cry.
"Another fountain!" exclaimed the Squire, turning upon his heel.
He stopped on the threshold to look back at nurse and children.
"You have had your whim, Mistress Bridget," he said, shaking his forefinger at her; "look you that no harm comes of it;" and with that he stalked away, and went back to his den, without so much as a word to Barbara Layburne, who looked after him with strangely wistful eyes.
Then, when the sound of his firm tread had died into silence, she too left the nurse and the babies, and stalked away to her own den.
"A pretty pair," muttered Bridget, as she squatted down upon the ground to play with her charges; but whether she meant the two babies, or the Squire and his housekeeper, remains an open question.