“Matter enough,” he growled in answer: “to have a crew of ridiculous women around you, no better than babies! Here’s Alice in a world of a way about Jack, proclaiming that some harm has happened to him.”
“What harm? Does she know of any?”
“No, she does not know of any,” croaked Herbert, flicking a growing gooseberry off a bush with the rake. “She says a dream disclosed it to her.”
The pater stared. Tod threw up his head with a laugh.
“You might have thought she’d got her death-warrant read out to her, so white and trembling did she come down,” continued Herbert in an injured tone. “She had dreamt a dream, foreshadowing evil to Jack, she began to tell us—and not a morsel of breakfast could she touch.”
“But that’s not like Alice,” continued the Squire. “She is too sensible: too practical for such folly.”
“It’s not like any rational woman. And Grace would have condoled with her! Women infect each other.”
“What was the dream?”
“Some nonsense or other, you may be sure. I would not let her relate it, to me, or to Grace. Alice burst into tears and called me hard-hearted. I came out here to get away from her.”
“For goodness’ sake don’t let her upset herself over a rubbishing dream, Tanerton,” cried the Squire, all sympathy. “She’s not strong, you know, just now. I dreamt one night the public hangman was appointed to take my head off; but it is on my shoulders yet. You tell her that.”