“Then he must have picked up Brook at Worcester,” said Tod, in his decisive way.
“May be so,” conceded the Squire, coming round to reason. “But I don’t see what they could be doing in Dip Lane.”
The storm had disappeared the following morning, but the ground was white with a thin coating of snow; and in the afternoon, when we started for Timberdale to call on William Brook, the sky was blue and the sun shining. Climbing up from the Ravine and crossing the field beyond it to the high-road, we met Darbyshire, the surgeon, striding along as fast as his legs would carry him.
“You seem to be in a hurry,” remarked the Squire.
“Just sent for to a sick patient over yonder,” replied Darbyshire, nodding to some cottages in the distance. “Dying, the report is; supposed to have swallowed poison. Dare say it will turn out to be a case of cucumber.”
He was speeding on when Tod asked whether he had seen William Brook yet. Darbyshire turned to face him, looking surprised.
“Seen Brook yet! No; how should I see him? Brook’s not come, is he?”
“He got home last night. St. George drove him from Worcester in his gig,” said Tod, and went on to explain that we had passed them in Dip Lane. Darbyshire was uncommonly pleased. Brook was a favourite of his.
“I am surprised that I have not seen him,” he cried; “I have been about all the morning. St. George was in Worcester yesterday, I know. Wonder, though, what induced them to make a pilgrimage through Dip Lane!”
Just, you see, as the rest of us had wondered.