“Don’t you! You’ll be a muff to the end, lad. Fancy a fine young fellow like Reste, a man of the world, staying on at that pokey little place of Barbary’s unless he had some strong motive to keep him there! I dare say he pays Barbary well for the accommodation.”
“I dare say Barbary could not afford to entertain him unless he did.”
“He stops there to make love to her. It must be a poor look-out, though, for Katrine, pretty little dimpled girl! As much chance of a wedding, I should say, as of a blue moon.”
“Why not?”
“Why not! Want of funds. I’d start for London, if I were you, Johnny, and set the Thames on fire. A man must be uncommonly hard up when he lets all the birds go beside him for want of taking out a licence.”
They were walking onwards slowly, Mr. Reste bending to talk to her. And of course it will be understood that a good deal of that which I have said, and am about to say, is only related from what came to my knowledge later on.
“Is it true that you had meant to go abroad this year?” Katrine was asking him.
“Yes, I once thought of it,” he answered. “I have friends living at Dieppe, and they wanted me to go to them. But I have stayed on here instead. Another week of it, ten days perhaps, and then I must leave Worcestershire and you, Katrine.”
“But why?”