“Let's turn back; perhaps she may not be at the window,” cried Ursula. “It is so dull here.”
Janey stopped short in the heat of the walk, objecting for the moment.
“I wish you had not gone to London. You never used to care for the streets and the shops; now a regular good walk is too much for you,” cried Janey.
“With a turnip-field on one side and a potato-field on the other!” said Ursula, in high disdain.
“I tell you what!” cried Janey. “I don't think I like you since you came back. The Dorsets are fine people, and we are not fine. There are no grand parties, nor theatres, nor balls at Carlingford. When we go out here, we go to walk, not to see things, as you have been used to doing. I don't know what you mean by it; nineteen years with us, and one fortnight with them! and the fortnight counts for more than all the years!”
Janey was not in the habit of restraining her voice any more than anything else about her, and she spoke this out with loud school-girl tones, reckless who might hear her. In most cases she might have done this with the utmost impunity, and how was she to know, as she said to her sister afterwards, in self-defence, that any one, especially any gentleman, could be lurking about, spying upon people, among those nasty allotments? There was some one there, however, who came down the muddy path, all cut up by the wheel-barrows, with a smile upon his face. A gentleman? Janey called him so without a doubt on the subject; but Ursula, more enlightened and slightly irritated, had her doubts. He was dressed, not with any care of morning costume, but wore a black frock-coat of the most formal description, with a white cravat carelessly tied, semi-clerical, and yet not clerical. He had a smile on his face, which, on the whole, was rather a handsome face, and looked at them, showing evident signs of having heard what Janey said. To be sure, he did not say anything, but Ursula felt that his look was just the same as if he had spoken, and coloured high, resenting the intrusion. By this stranger's side was one of the men who had been working at the allotments, whose hands were not clean, and whose boots were heavy with the clinging, clayey soil. When they had nearly reached the road, the gentleman turned round and shook hands with his companion, and then walked on towards Carlingford, throwing another look towards the girls as he passed. It would be hard to say whether curiosity or anger was strongest in Ursula. In Janey, the former sentiment carried everything before it.
“Oh, I wonder who he is?” she cried, low, but eager, in her sister's ear. “Who can he be, Ursula, who can he be? We know all the men about here, every one, as well as we know Reginald. Oh, Ursula, who do you think he can be?”
“He is very impertinent,” cried Ursula, with an angry blush. “How should I know? And oh! how very silly of you, Janey, to talk so loud, and make impudent men stare at us so.”
“Impudent!” cried Janey. “I didn't talk loud. He looked rather nice, on the contrary. Why, he laughed! Do you call that impudent? It can't be anybody from the town, because we know everybody; and did you see him shaking hands with that man? How very funny! Let us run in and tell Mrs. Sam Hurst, and ask her who she thinks he is. She is sure to know.”
“Janey,” said Ursula, severely, “if you live very long, you will be as great a gossip and as fond of news as Mrs. Sam Hurst herself.”