For a long time nobody spoke, and the pigeons came boldly to the sill of the open window and cooed.
At last said the Paymaster, as if he were resuming a conversation: “I met him out there on horseback; the hunt is still up, I’m thinking.”
“Ay?” said the Cornal, as if he gripped the subject and waited the continuance of the narrative.
“He’ll have ranged the country, I’m thinking,” went on his brother. “I could not but be sorry for the man.”
Miss Mary cast upon him a look he seldom got from her, of warmth more than kinship, but she had nothing to say; her voice was long dumb in that parlour where she loved and feared, a woman subjugate to a sex far less worthy than her own and less courageous.
“Humph!” said the Cornal. He felt with nervous inquiry at his ragged chin, inspired for a second by old dreads of untidy morning parades.
“I had one consolation for my bachelordom in him,” went on the younger brother, and then he paused confused.
“And what might that be?” asked the Cornal.
“It’s that I’m never like to be in the same scrape with a child of mine,” he answered, pretending a jocosity that sat ill on him. Then he looked at Miss Mary a little shamefaced for a speech so uncommonly confidential.
The Cornal opened his mouth as if he would laugh, but no sound came.