Alice, being still so weak, and quite unfit for anything, was frightened at their faces, and drew back and sank with faintness.
“Sillies!” cried Mabel, jumping out, with Polly’s doll inside her muff; “naturals, or whatever you are, just come and do your duty.”
They still hung away, and not one of them would help poor Alice across her own father’s threshold, until a great scatter of snow flew about, and a black horse was reigned up hotly.
“You zanies!” cried the Rector; “you cowardly fools! You never come to church, or you would know what to do. You skulking hounds, are you afraid of your own master’s daughter? I have got my big whip. By the Lord, you shall have it. Out of my parish I’ll set to and kick every dastardly son of a cook of you.”
“Where is my father?” said Alice faintly; “I hoped that he would have come for me.”
At the sound of her voice they began to perceive that she was not the ghost of the Woeburn; and the Rector’s strong championship cast at once the broad and sevenfold shield of the church over the maiden’s skeary deed. “Oh, Uncle Struan,” she whispered, hanging upon his arm, as he led her in; “have I committed some great crime? Will my father be ashamed of me?”
“He should rather be ashamed of himself, I think,” he answered, for the present declining the subject which he meant to have out with her some day; “but, my dear, he is not quite well; that is why he does not come to see you. And, indeed, he does not know—I mean he is not at all certain how you are. Trotman, open that door, sir, this moment.”
The parson rather carried than led his niece into a sitting-room, and set her by a bright fire, and left Mabel Lovejoy to attend to her; while he himself hurried away to hear the last account of Sir Roland, and to consult the doctor as to the admittance of poor Alice. But in the passage he met Colonel Clumps, heavily stumping to and fro, with even more than wonted energy.
“Upon my life and soul, Master Parson, I must get out of this house,” he cried; “slashing work, sir, horrible slashing! I had better be under Old Beaky again. I came here to quiet my system, sir: and zounds, sir, they make every hair stand up.”