"And Branksome, and Fellowes, and half a dozen more—they are always seeking you," said Sir John, with mock consternation. "I am to have my hands full, it seems, looking after my niece. It might have been better if I had kept her at the Abbey."
"In my absence I have seen enough of men to make me careful about falling in love with one."
"Still, it must needs be with a man if you fall in love at all," said her uncle, seating himself on the stone seat beside her, "and there is something I want to say on this matter, Barbara. It is well that you should have seen something of the town, but it is not a good place in which to judge men."
"And around Aylingford I know of no men worth troubling about," said Barbara, "so it would seem that I am on the high road to dying a spinster."
"Never was woman more unlikely to do that than you," answered Sir John. "When a young girl talks like that, an old campaigner like myself begins to wonder in which direction her heart has fluttered. No woman ever yet regarded being a spinster with complacency, and few women jest about it unless they are satisfied there is no danger. Is there a confession to be made, Barbara?"
"None. Except for you and Martin Fairley, all men are—well, just men,
and of little interest to me. It is certain I cannot marry my uncle, and
I am not likely to fall in love with Martin, am I? By the way, where is
Martin? I have not seen him since I returned to the Abbey."
"I met him just a week ago, here on the terrace, with his fiddle under his arm. He was starting to tramp to the other end of the county, he told me, to play at a village wedding."
"Poor Martin!" said the girl.
"Mad Martin, rather," said Sir John; "and yet not so mad that he has not had a certain effect upon us all, and upon you most of all. Ever since you were a child he has been your willing slave, and he has taught you many things out of that strange brain of his. I sometimes fancy that he has made you look upon life differently from the way in which most women look upon it, has filled it with more romance than it can hold, and taken out of it much that is real."
"In fact, made me as mad as he is," laughed Barbara.