“Suppose we remain here, Johnny?”
“To live?”
“Nonsense, lad! For a month. I am going for a sail. Will you come?”
After the terrible break-up of our boating tour, poor Slingsby Temple was taken home to Templemore, ourselves going back to Sanbury to wait for the funeral, and for our black garments, for which we had sent. Rupert was fearfully cut up. Although he was the heir now, and would be chief of Templemore, I never saw any brother take a death more to heart. “Slingsby liked you much, Ludlow,” said Rupert to me, when he came to us at the inn at Sanbury the day before the funeral, and the hot tears were in his eyes as he spoke. “He always liked you at Oxford: I have heard him say so. Like himself, you kept yourself free from the lawlessness of the place——”
“As if a young one like Johnny would go in for anything of the kind!” interrupted Tod.
“Young?” repeated Rupert Temple. “Well, I don’t know. When I was there myself, some young ones—lads—went in for a pretty good deal. He liked you much, Ludlow.”
And somehow I liked to hear Rupert say it.
Quitting Sanbury after the funeral, we came to this little place, Cray Bay, which was on the sea-coast, a few miles beyond Templemore. Our pleasure cut short at the beginning of the holiday, we hardly knew what to do with the rest of it, and felt like a couple of fish suddenly thrown out of water. Mrs. Temple, taking her son and daughter, went for change to her brother’s, Lord Cracroft.
At Cray Bay we found one small inn, which bore the odd sign of the Whistling Wind, and was kept by Mrs. Jones, a stout Welshwoman. The bedroom she gave us enjoyed a look-out upon some stables, and would not hold much more than the two small beds in it. In answer to Tod’s remonstrances, she said that she had a better room, but it was just now occupied.