Fred looked on with unsympathetic eyes while the elderly pseudo-postilion, very shamefaced, made pretence of arresting the runaway steed, which bore the sedate form of a mahogany arm-chair.
“You will just excuse me,” he said, “till the play’s played out. There, now, Rory, fling your reins to the hostler, and go in and get your dram—which means a chocolate sweetie,” he added, to forestall any reproof.
If Rory’s father had been a great personage, or even if being only Mr. Ogilvie of Gilston he had been Rory’s grandfather, the situation would have been charming; but as he was neither, and very commonplace and elderly, the tableau was spoiled. (“Old idiot,” the Miss Dempsters would have said, “making a fool of a bairn that should have been his son’s bairn, and neglecting his own lawful children, at his age!” The sentiment was absurd, but Fred shared it.) Perhaps it was the unrelaxing countenance of the young man, as Mrs. Ogilvie seized and carried off the charioteer which made the poor papa so ill at ease. He pulled the chairs apart with an uneasy smile and gave one to his visitor.
“No, I am not ashamed of it,” he said, “but I daresay I would look ridiculous enough to a stranger:” and with this he sat down before his table, on which, amid the writing things, were a child’s trumpet and other articles belonging to a person of very tender years. “And in what can I be of use to you?” he asked.
It was Fred’s turn to grow red. He had been led into this snare against his will. He felt rather disgusted, rather angry.
“I don’t know,” he said, “that it was anything calling for your attention to-day. It was a matter—still undecided. I should not have disturbed you—at a moment of relaxation.”
“Oh, if that is all,” said Mr. Ogilvie with a smile, “I have Rory always, you know. The little pickle is for ever on my hands. He likes me better than the weemen, because I spoil him more, my wife says.”
Having said this with effusion, the good man awoke once more to the fact that his audience was not with him, and grew dully red.
“I am entirely at your service now,” he said; “would it be anything about the wheat? Your grieve is, no doubt, a very trustworthy man, but I would not leave your fields longer uncut if I was you. There is no sun now to do them any good.”
“Thanks, very much,” said Fred, “it was not about the wheat——”