"Why don't you laugh at me? why don't you jeer me?" she continues, vehemently; "why don't you tell me you are very glad of it, and that I richly deserve it, as I see you are longing to do? Anything would be better than standing there like a stock or a stone!"
"It is not of much consequence how I stand or how I look," he replies, coldly. "It would be more to the purpose to know how you are to get home!"
"I will walk as I am," she cries impulsively, springing to her feet; "it will be a fit penance for my idiocy, and you shall go on ahead. I don't want you to be disgraced by being seen in company with such an object."
"That is very probable, isn't it?" he answers, laughing good-humouredly. "No, I have a better proposition than that, I think. It has just occurred to me that an old servant of ours lives at no great distance from here, her cottage is not more than three or four fields off. If you can manage to get there she would dry your clothes for you in a minute."
Rendered docile by her late disaster, feeling very small, and hanging her head, Esther acquiesces. Her gown, from which every particle of starch or stiffness has fled, clings to her limbs and defines their form; the water drips down from her in a thousand little spouts and rivulets: bang, bang, go her soaked petticoats against her ankles at every step she takes.
"You have had almost enough of taking me out to walk, I expect," she remarks presently, rather grimly.
"You have had almost enough of jumping brooks, I expect," he retorts, drily; and then they walk on in silence till they reach a little whitewashed cottage, with its slip of potato ground and plot of pinks and marigolds and lark-spurs—an oasis of tilled ground among the wilderness of pasturage.
St. John knocks at the half-open door and puts his head in. "Are you at home, Mrs. Brown? How are you?" says he, in that frank, friendly voice that goes far to make the Felton tenants wish that Sir St. John reigned in Sir Thomas's stead.
"Quite well, thank you, Mr. St. John; I hope I see you the same," replies the person addressed, coming to the door with a jolly red face and a voluminous widow's cap that contradict one another; "it's a long time since we've seen you come our way."
"So it is, Mrs. Brown; but, you see, I have been after the partridges."