“Better send Joan to the Manor to say you cannot attend to-day.”
“Oh, I would rather go; I must go,” she said hastily. For this good girl had been schooling herself as well as she knew how; making up her mind to persevere in fulfilling the daily duties of her life in the best way she should be able; lest, if she fell short abruptly, suspicion might turn towards her father. She had wildly prayed Heaven to grant her strength and help to bear up on her course. Not from her must come the pointing finger of discovery. It is true that he—Edgar—was her first and dearest love; she should never love another as she had loved him; but she was her father’s child, and held him sacred.
“Why must you go?” demanded Mr. Barbary, as, having finished a plate of broiled mushrooms, he began upon a couple of eggs with an appetite that the night’s work did not seem to have spoiled.
“The air—the walk—may do me good.”
“Well, you know best, child. I suppose Todhetley be off to Evesham after that dog of theirs,” Mr. Barbary went on to remark. “Master Dick Standish must be a bold sinner to steal the dog one day and parade the open streets with it the next! If—— What is it now, Joan?”
For old Joan had come in with a face of surprise. “Sir,” she cried, “has Tom Noah been at work here this morning?”
“Not that I know of,” replied Mr. Barbary. Tom Noah, an industrious young fellow, son to Noah, the gardener, was occasionally employed by Mr. Barbary to clean up the yard and clear the garden of its superfluous rubbish.
“Our back’us has been scrubbed out this morning, sir,” went on Joan, still in astonishment. “And it didn’t want it. Who in the world can have come in and gone and done it?”
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Barbary.