But the big man would hear no reason; he looked at the little couple before him, so young and so silly, as if he had been a bishop at least.
‘I couldn’t refuse to marry ye,’ he said; ‘I hadn’t the right. But if I had followed my own lights, I would just have sent ye home to your parents to be put back in the nursery; and ye shall see no books of mine, nor tell tales upon other folk.’
And nothing could move him from this resolution. Kitty nearly cried with vexation when they got into the train again; her own escapade dwindled into something quite secondary.
‘It was so silly of me not to make sure of the name. I am sure the first name was Everard, or something like that. And what a brute that man is, Walter! If you had really loved me as you say, you would have pushed him away or knocked him down.’
‘Why, he was six times as big as me, Kitty!’
‘What does that matter,’ she said, ‘when it’s for the sake of someone you love?’
But perhaps this is rather a feminine view.
There had been, as may be supposed, a great commotion in The Leas when it was found that Kitty’s room was vacant in the morning. A girl’s absence is more easily discovered than a boy’s. Mrs. Lawrence thought that Walter had gone off for the day to see some of his friends, and would come back to dinner, as he had done many times before; and though she was angry with him for leaving his work, she was not anxious. But a young lady does not make escapades of this sort; and when it was discovered that Kitty’s best things had disappeared, and her favourite locket, and that she had evidently never gone to bed in a proper and legitimate way, the house and the neighbourhood was roused. Mrs. Bircham sent off messengers far and near; and Mr. Bircham himself, though an easy-minded man, went out on the same errand, visiting, among other places, Blencarrow, where all the gaiety of a Christmas party was still going on, and the boys were trying with delight the first faint film of ice upon the pond to see when it would be likely to bear. Then, after a hasty but late luncheon, he had gone to see whether Mrs. Lawrence knew anything about the fugitive; and Mrs. Bircham, at her wits’ end, and not knowing what to do, was alone in the drawing-room at The Leas, pondering everything, wishing she had Kitty there to shake her, longing to pour forth floods of wrath; but at the same time chilled by that dread of something having happened which will come in even when a mother is most enraged. She was saying to herself that nothing could have happened—that it must be that young Lawrence—that the girl was an idiot—that she washed her hands of her—that she would have nothing to do with them—that, oh, if she had only thought to lock her up in her bedroom and stop it all!
‘Oh, Kitty, Kitty! where are you, child?’ she cried nervously at the conclusion of all.
There was a rustle and a little rush, and Kitty ran in, flinging herself upon her knees upon the hearthrug, and replied: