For Mrs. Vale had been putting up some tartlets, and gave us each a packet of them. “Eat them as you go along,” she said. “And give my love to Harry.”
“And tell him that he must bring you both on Sunday, to spend the day,” added Mr. Vale. “Perhaps young Mr. Todhetley will come also. You might have breakfast, and go with us to church. I’ll write to Dr. Frost.”
Outside at last; I and my shame. These good, simple-hearted people—oh, had we indeed, between us, made them childless? “Young Mr. Todhetley,” waiting amid the stubble in the outer field, came springing up to the fence, his face white in the light of the hunter’s moon.
“What a long while you have been! Well?”
“Nothing,” said Sanker, briefly. “No news! I don’t think we’ve been much above five minutes.”
What a walk home it was! Mr. Blair, the out-of-school master, came down upon us with his thunder, but Tod seemed never to hear him. The boys, hushed and quiet as nature is before an impending storm, had not dared to tell and provoke it. I could not see Lacketer.
“Where’s Vale?” roared Mr. Blair, supposing he had been with us. “But that prayers are waiting, I’d cane all four of you. Where are you going, Todhetley?”
“Don’t stop me, Mr. Blair,” said Tod, putting him aside with a quiet authority and a pain in his voice that made Blair stare. We called Blair, Baked Pie, because of his name, Pyefinch.
“Read the prayers without me, please Mr Blair,” went on Tod. “I must see Dr. Frost. If you don’t know what has happened to-night, sir, ask the rest to tell you.”
He went out to his interview with the Doctor. Tod was not one to shirk his duty. Seeing Vale’s father and mother he had shrunk from; but the confession to Dr. Frost he made himself. What passed between them we never knew: how much contrition Tod spoke, how much reproach the Doctor. Roger and Miles, the man-servant and boy, were called into the library, and sent abroad: we thought it might be to search the banks of the river, or give notice for it to be dragged. The next called in was Sanker. The next, Lacketer.