‘I hope Mrs. Egerton is quite well?’
‘Oh! she’s well enough, thanks. She’s grown stout. Ladies of her age generally do. She likes to mess about in the parish, and Cattley has always given in to her: but I mean to put my foot down, and make an end of that sort of thing. I shall have it entirely in my hands, of course; for my father, you know, doesn’t trouble himself much to interfere.’
‘And I hope the rector is—quite well?’ said John.
‘Oh, thanks, he’s well enough.’
There was not a word of Elly on the one side nor the other. John felt a chill, so far as he was concerned, which he could not himself understand. He had been so full of her, thinking more of her than of all the rest of the village put together. And now he did not even inquire for her! He walked along the road under the fresh green of the trees, while Percy entered more largely into all the new things he was about to do. John did not take very much interest in it. It would have pleased him a great deal more to hear the simplest thing about her whose name he had not ventured to pronounce. It was but a short way between Mr. Cattley’s door and the rectory, but Percy had managed to unfold a great many of his plans, and show clearly enough that he meant to turn the parish upside down, before they reached the door. John, to tell the truth, gave but a very distracted attention. His eyes were inspecting the house, every window and opening. It seemed so strange that she should not at least be looking out for him somewhere, expecting him. Elly! Why, she had been about the same as a sister. She had been more than his sister: she had been his comrade and play-fellow: and to think that he had not the courage to ask for her, and that she did not so much as look out of a window to see whether he was coming! It was neither possible nor natural that such a thing should be.
Percy’s voice ran on in a sort of complacent sing-song, while this thought took possession of John’s mind. What did he care for what the fellow was going to do in the parish? His self-assurance was intolerable to John, notwithstanding that he himself, in his way, was quite as much disposed to think well of his own new methods, and despise his elders, as Percy could do. But that is a thing which looks much less natural in another than it does in our own case. And John’s suspense and surprise were becoming more and more highly wrought. Could it be possible that Elly was not at home, that she was absent just when he looked for her, that she might perhaps never have heard that he was coming? This thought roused a great anger in his mind—he jumped at it with a flash of sudden conviction. She had never received his letter. She had never heard——
When suddenly the door opened, and some one came out, meeting them: a young lady nearly as tall as John, with brown hair of a warm shade, plaited in endless coils round the back of her head, with a stately carriage, a long white dress almost touching the ground; but, what was far better than all the rest, two hands held out.
‘After all, I was the first to see you,’ she cried. ‘Oh, Jack, did he tell you? I was looking over the garden-wall when you passed: but you never looked up. Oh, Jack, welcome home!’
And this was Elly! He took the hands she held out to him, and grasped them tight, and stared at her, but with changing looks, and the most extraordinary revolution going on in his mind. So this was Elly! He felt himself grow red, he felt himself stare; he was speechless, and had not a word to say. He had a kind of certainty that he must be disappointing to her, and that she expected him, naturally, to say something. But he could not find a word to say.
At last she tried to draw her fingers out of his clasp, and grew red, and laughed.