CHAPTER XVI.
We read, or talked, or quarrelled, as it chanced.
We were not lovers, nor even friends well-matched:
Say rather, scholars upon different tracks,
Or thinkers disagreed.
Aurora Leigh.
With his usual forethought, Mr. Cranmer had made out in his own mind a plan of the coming walk. He meant to walk from Poole to Edge with Elsa Brabourne, the anachronism, and return from Edge to Poole with Wynifred Allonby, one of the latest developments of her century.
He felt that there must needs be a piquancy about the contrast which the dialogue in these two walks would necessarily present. No doubt one great cause of his happy, contented nature was this faculty for amusing himself, and at once becoming interested in whatever turned up.
It is scarcely a common quality among the English upper classes, who mostly seem to expect that the mountain will come to Mahomet as a matter of course, and so remain "orbed in their isolation," and, as a natural consequence, not very well entertained by life in general. It was this trait in Claud which drew him and his eccentric sister together. She was every bit as ready as he to explore all the obscure social developments of her day. Anything approaching eccentricity was a passport to her favor, as to his; and these valley people had taken strong hold on the fancy of both.
He was standing just outside the door, when Wynifred came down ready for her walk, and he noted approvingly that the London girl was equipped for country walking in the matter of thick shoes, stout stick, and shady hat. On the shoes he bestowed a special mental note of approval. Lady Mabel had once said that she believed the first thing Claud noticed in a woman was her feet. Miss Allonby was intensely unconscious that her own were at this moment passing the ordeal of judgment from such a critic, and passing it favorably.
"Osmond is very quiet and comfortable, and nurse thinks I can well be spared," she announced.
"I must reluctantly bid you all good-bye for the present," said Mr. Fowler, regretfully. "I am obliged to go on to visit a farm up this way. I wish you a pleasant walk."