“Are you going to London again?” asked the Squire, rather surprised. It was something new for Stephen Radcliffe to be a gad-about.
“I shall have to go, I reckon,” said Stephen, ungraciously. “I’ve to see Stettin before he sails.”
Stephen Radcliffe did go up again, apparently much against his will, to judge by the ill words he gave to it. And the report he brought back of Frank that time was rather more cheering.
The Squire was standing one hot morning in the yard in his light buff coat, blowing up Dwarf Giles for something that had gone wrong in the stables, when a man was seen making his way from the oak-walk towards the yard. The June hay-making was about, and the smell of the hay was wafted across to us on the wings of the summer breeze.
“Who’s that, Johnny?” asked the pater: for the sun was shining right in his eyes.
“It—it looks like Stephen Radcliffe, sir.”
“You may tell him by his rusty suit of velveteen,” put in Tod; who stood watching a young brood of ducklings in the duck-pond, and the agonies of the hen that had hatched them.
Stephen Radcliffe it was. He had a stout stick in his hand, and his face was of a curious leaden colour. Which, with him, took the place of paleness.
“I’ve had bad news, Mr. Todhetley,” he began, in low tones, without any preliminary greeting. “Frank’s dead.”
The Squire’s straw hat, which he chanced to have taken off, dropped on the stones. “Dead! Frank!” he exclaimed in an awestruck tone. “It can’t be true.”