“Ay; but Fontaine is changed,” returned the colonel: “all his old domineering ways are gone out of him. When Bazalgette was over here, he did not attempt even to persuade her: she must take her own course, he said. So poor Bazalgette went back as he came—wifeless. It was a pity.”
“Why?”
“Because this George Bazalgette was a nice fellow,” replied Colonel Letsom. “An open-hearted, fine-looking, generous man, and desperately in love with her. Miss Verena will not readily find his compeer in a summer day’s march.”
“As old as Adam, I suppose, colonel,” interjected Tod.
“Yes—if you choose to put Adam’s age down at three or four and thirty,” laughed the colonel, as he took his leave.
To wait many hours, once she was at Crabb, without laying in a stock of those delectable “family pills,” invented by the late Thomas Rymer, would have been quite beyond the philosophy of Mrs. Todhetley. That first morning, not ten minutes after Colonel Letsom left us, taking the Squire with him, she despatched me to Timberdale for a big box of them. Tod would not come: said he had his flies to see to.
Dashing through the Ravine and out on the field beyond it, I came upon Jack Tanerton. Good old Jack! The Squire had said Sir Dace was changed: I saw that Jack was. He looked taller and thinner, and the once beaming face had care upon it.
“Where are you bound for, Jack?”
“Not for any place in particular. Just sauntering about.”
“Walk my way, then. I am going to Rymer’s.”