“It’s very good of you to say so,” he replied heartily. “On my side I hope you will find us pleasant neighbours. My sister—I’ve one still unmarried—is looking forward very much to coming here.”
“I do hope the weather will be better,” said Betty; “it has been—oh! so horrid since you were here, so dull and depressing.”
“It has been pretty bad all over the country, I fancy,” he replied. By this time they were at the gate of Fir Cottage. “I hope,” he continued, “that Lady Emma and Mr Morion are well, and that I may have the pleasure of seeing them in a few days. I shall probably stay on here now, as I have a visit to pay in the neighbourhood. I mean I shall not go all the way home again before my people come down. And—though I mustn’t detain you now—you will tell me the story of the ghost some day, I hope—and how you came to be wandering in search of it?”
“Oh!” cried Betty in alarm, “please don’t speak of it! Please,” imploringly, “don’t ever tell any one that I did. I should be so scolded. I was really going to meet my sisters, and it was very silly of me to go near the Laurel Walk.”
“Oh, well,” he said, “I won’t betray your confidence, but on your side you must promise to tell me all about it some day soon. Perhaps,”—with a slight touch of hesitation—“I may look in to-morrow afternoon on the chance of finding some of you at home.”
A sudden inspiration seized Betty.
“Is—is there possibly anything that you would like to ask papa about?” she said abruptly. “I am sure he would be pleased to—to be of use to you, if there were:” and to herself she added mentally, “It is the only chance of propitiating papa, I am sure, for Mr Littlewood to seem to seek his advice. He rarely has the pleasure, poor papa, of being applied to as if he were of any consequence, and he’d be gratified at it.”
Horace Littlewood was by no means devoid of tact and insight into the peculiarities of those with whom he had to do. His first blunder, as regarded the feelings of his new acquaintances, had also sharpened his perceptions with regard to them—he read between the lines, so to say, of Betty’s innocent appeal; indeed, it was not difficult to put two and two together in this case, for Mr Milne had descanted at some length on the idiosyncrasies of the master of Fir Cottage. And even kindly old Mr Ferraby had given more than one hint of the same nature, greatly influenced, no doubt, by his earnest wish that circumstances might arise to break the monotony of the three young lives in which both he and his wife felt so natural and sincere an interest. So Betty’s suggestion fell on prepared ground.
“How very kind of you to think of such a thing!” he said quickly. “Well, yes, if it were not troubling your father too much—for I know he is something of an invalid—I should be glad of his opinion on some little local matters. There is one of the keepers I don’t quite like the look of, and yet, as you can understand, I don’t want to begin by making myself disagreeable.”
“There is one, I know, that papa doesn’t like,” said Betty eagerly, “though he has been a long time about the place. Of course papa never shoots now, himself, though he used to be a very good shot. But it will be far the best for you to ask him yourself.”