"Well, they shall not give a ball!" say I, resolutely, "but"—(in a tone of melancholy helplessness)—"they may throw down all the horses, for any thing I can do to prevent them! A horse's knees would have to be very much broken before I should perceive that they were!"
"You must get Algy to help you," he says, kindly. "It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, is not it? Poor boy!"—(laughing)—"You must not expect him to be very keen about my speedy return."
As he speaks, an arrow of animosity toward Algy shoots through my heart.
We are at Tempest—Sir Roger and I. It has been his wish to establish me there before his departure; and now it is the gray of the evening before his setting off, and we are strolling through the still park. Vick is racing, with idiotic ardor, through the tall green bracken, after the mottled deer, yelping with shrill insanity, and vainly imagining that she is going to overtake them. The gray rabbits are scuttling across the grass rides in the pale light: as I see them popping in and out of their holes, I cannot help thinking of Bobby. Apparently, Sir Roger also is reminded of him.
"Nancy," he says, looking down at me with a smile of recollected entertainment, "have you forgiven Bobby yet for leaving you sitting on the wall? I remember, in the first blaze of your indignation, you vowed that never should he fire a gun in your preserves!—do you still stick to it, or have you forgiven him?"
"That I have not!" cry I, heartily. "None of them shall shoot any thing! Why should they? Every thing shall be kept for you against you come back!"
He raises his eyebrows a little.
"Rabbits and all?"
"Rabbits and all!" reply I, firmly.
"And what will the farmers say?" asks Sir Roger, smiling.