Mr. Sharpe’s hand crept back to the saddle and resumed its impatient tune; he planted his legs a little more widely apart, continuing the while to stare unwinkingly in his nephew’s face.
When the tension had become almost unbearable, he spoke again.
‘I thought I ’d wait for ’ee here,’ he said. ‘I thought ye ’d very likely have summat to say to me.’
The young man bit his lip and clenched his hands; he could scarcely brook the expectant look in those eyes.
‘What am I to say, Uncle Isaac? I—what can I say? I’m going away at once.’
The combined effect of sunshine and emotion had already intensified the farmer’s usually healthy colour, but this announcement caused it to deepen to a positively alarming extent. For a moment he seemed in danger of suffocation; he raised his hand mechanically to the loose collar of his smock and clutched at it; his eyes seemed ready to start from their sockets, and, though he opened his mouth and rolled his head from side to side as though about to fulminate against his nephew, no words came.
‘Don’t,’ cried Richard, much alarmed—‘don’t be so angry, uncle—you really need n’t be so much upset. I tell you I’m going away at once—to-night.’
Farmer Sharpe sank down on the bank, sliding his legs out before him rigid as a pair of compasses; his head continued to roll threateningly, and his eyes to gaze fiercely at Richard, but it was some time before he could find voice.
‘Ye can’t go to-night,’ he said at last, in husky, suffocating tones: ‘there bain’t no train to-night.’
‘Not from Branston, I know; but I mean to ride to Wimborne, and catch the night train there.’