‘Heaven forbid that he should be like my father, and his dinner the most important event in his day!’ retorted Celia, whereat Mrs. Clare murmured mildly,—
‘My love, your father has a very peculiar constitution. There are things which he can eat, and things which he cannot eat.’
‘Of course, you dear deluded mater. Cold mutton is poisonous to his constitution; but I never heard of his being the worse for truffled turkey.’
And then Celia skipped off to attire herself, not unbecomingly, in a dark gray ulster, and the most impertinent of billycock hats.
The ramble on the moor was a success. Edward held himself aloof, and smoked his cigar in gloomy silence, but the two others were as merry as a brace of schoolboys taking a stolen holiday. They clambered the steepest paths, crossed the wildest bits of hill and hollow, narrowly escaped coming to grief in boggy ground, and laughed and talked with inexhaustible spirits all the time. George Gerard hardly knew himself, and was struck with wonder at finding that life could be so pleasant. The wintry air was fresh and clear, the wind whistled gaily over the vast sweep of undulating turf and heather. Just at sunset there came a flood of yellow light over the low western sky; a farewell smile from a sun that had hidden himself all day.
‘Good gracious!’ cried Celia, ‘we shall barely have time to scamper home to dinner; and if there is one thing that irritates papa more than another, it is to wait five minutes for his dinner. He never waits more than five minutes. If he did, I believe lunacy would ensue before the tenth. You ought not to have led me astray so far, Mr. Gerard.’
‘I think it is you who have been leading me astray,’ said Gerard, half grave, half gay. ‘I never felt so far from my work-a-day self in my life. You have a great deal to answer for, Miss Clare.’
Celia blushed at the charge, but did not reply to it. She turned and surveyed the ground over which they had travelled.
‘I can’t see Edward anywhere,’ she exclaimed.
‘Do you know, I have an idea that he left us about an hour ago,’ said Gerard.