“Yesterday was the day Jack was to sail,” interrupted Tod.
“Of course it was,” acquiesced the Rector: “he must be half-way down the channel by this time. If—— Here comes Alice!” he broke off. “I shall go. I don’t want to hear more of such stuff.”
He went on down the garden in a huff, disappearing behind the kidney-beans. Alice, wearing a light print gown and black silk apron, her smooth brown hair glossy as ever, and her open face as pretty, shook hands with them both.
“And what’s this we hear about your tormenting yourself over a dream?” blundered the Squire. Though whether it was a blunder to say it, I know not; or whether, but for that, she would have spoken: once the ice is broken, you may plunge in easily. “My dear, I’d not have thought it of you.”
Alice’s face took a deeper gravity, her eyes a far-off look. “It is quite true, Mr. Todhetley,” she sighed. “I have been very much troubled by a dream.”
“Tell it us, Alice,” said Tod, his whole face in a laugh. “What was it about?”
“That you may ridicule it?” she sighed.
“Yes,” he answered. “Ridicule it out of you.”
“You cannot do that,” was her quiet answer: and Tod told me in later days that it rather took him aback to see her solemn sadness. “I should like to relate it to you, Mr. Todhetley. Herbert would not hear it, or let Grace.”
“Herbert’s a parson, you know, my dear, and parsons think they ought to be above such things,” was the Squire’s soothing answer. “If it will ease your mind to tell it me—— Here, let us sit down under the pear-tree.”