Yet a third. “Little Harry Brown has got double pneumonia; the doctor does not think he can save him! He says he has no constitution.”
“Is it to bring down that exuberant cheerfulness of ours that we were talking of, that you are telling me all these catastrophes?” asks Rupert, rebelling at last.
“It does seem rather hard to be greeted by such a list of casualties,” she answers, confused and confounded; “but you see you have been away a good while—long enough for more than our usual average of disasters to happen.”
“And is that all? Does little Harry Brown end the catalogue?”
The question is a perfectly natural one, and put as naturally, yet it sets her trembling again.
“Yes, I think so.”
“If you remember any more, I would rather hear them.”
To that she seems to think no answer needed. They are beyond the village now, and on that high-road whose sociability he had vaunted to her. For the time it seems less frequented than he had promised, the workmen having gone home, and no market-day enlivening it with uncertainly driving men and gaily-hatted girls, three on a seat, in returning market-carts. Their only companion is the Spring, in that gaudiest of her moments when she is about to lose herself in Summer, daring her elder sister to vie with her sheeted hawthorn, her “golden chains,” her matchless output of leaf and blossom. And how blessedly different is each tree and shrub’s idea of spring! How various their method of expressing it! Some in odorous flower-bunches, some in green tassels, some in uniformity of colour, some in motley, their varying thoughts are diversely coloured, bronze and yellow, and dazzling gold-green.
To pause a while seems almost a necessity, yet Lavinia shivers; for Rupert has stopped and faced her, and there is no one in sight. Has he lured her hither with an assurance of publicity, only to make his belated claim upon her? As before, he reads her fear, and answers it.
“No!” he says, stepping back a couple of feet, yet still holding her at the disadvantage of commanding that full-face view which is so much less manageable a thing for the purpose of concealment than a profile; “do not be afraid: there is not the least cause for alarm! I only wanted to ask you if you are quite sure that little Johnny Brown’s double pneumonia closes our casualty list?”