“It would be a good thing for those girls to make some friends for themselves,” he thought to himself. “Nice as they are, I don’t altogether understand them; they don’t give themselves airs—the very reverse, yet for all that I suspect they are too proud for their own advantage. And if poor Western is really breaking up, goodness only knows what is to become of them!”
Early, very early the next morning, Mr Cheviott’s groom made his appearance at the Rectory to make inquiry, with his master’s compliments, for Mr Western. At the door he was met by “the young lady herself,” coming out for the refreshment of a breath of the sweet spring air, all the sweeter for the last night’s heavy rains.
“And she told me to tell you, sir, with Mrs Western’s compliments, as how the Rector was better than might have been expected, and as how the doctor gives good hopes.”
So “Sir Ingram de Romary” drove home again, and sympathising Alys heard with eager interest of her friend’s new troubles, and longed more than ever to see Mary Western again.
Chapter Twenty Eight.
Alys Puts Two and Two Together.
“I shall as now do more for you
Than longeth to womanhede.”
The Nut-brown Mayd.
“Mr Western is not so well, I hear,” said Mr Cheviott to his sister one afternoon, a fortnight or so after the Rector of Hathercourt’s first seizure.