"There were some beef cattle at the farm," said Miss Penelope. "Pierre drove them into town. He was here in the afternoon. I gave him money to stay in town overnight and go home by the cars to-morrow. So that is explained."
"Mr. Considine, may we commission you to engage the very best advice for Pierre?" said Matilda. "Being our servant we should feel bound to help him out of a difficulty in any case; but when he was assisting to protect Muriel, we must do more still. Spare no expense. See Mr. Jordan, or whomever you think the best. We would have sent word to Mr. Jordan by Randolph to act for us, but Randolph has not come back here. He will have walked home with Miss Rouget, I dare say. They seemed to enjoy each other's company immensely, which rather surprised me. Adèline is a nice girl, but rather inanimate, and Randolph is a lazy fellow, who prefers to sit still and let a lady amuse him. So they struck me, when they went off together, as being not a well-assorted pair, and yet they seemed to hit it off together uncommonly well. In fact, I have quite come to the conclusion that in such cases one never knows."
"Jean Bruneau will be anxious about his boy if he does not get home by to-morrow evening," said Penelope; "but how to send him word? I need not write, for he never goes to the post-office, and a letter to him would lie there till the postmaster happened to see him in the village. Telegraphing is the same; the message might lie a week at the post-office."
"We are going home to-morrow, Betsey and I," said Mrs. Bunce. "Can we assist you, Miss Stanley?"
"Indeed you can, Mrs. Bunce; if it is not too much trouble. If you would walk out to Bruneau's cottage and explain to them the detention of their boy. Tell them how well he has behaved, how indebted we feel to him, and how willingly we will go to every expense to send him home as soon as possible. You will indeed do us a favour. We will write you to-morrow, after Mr. Considine has spoken to the magistrate, so as to give the very latest news."
The Rev. Dionysius had eaten his morning rasher, and was consuming his second plateful of buckwheat cakes and maple syrup--there is nothing like a copious breakfast for enabling one to resist the cold--and was basking in his regained domesticity. He had been dwelling alone for three or four weeks, and though at first he had plunged with enthusiasm into his books, secure of freedom from interruption, he soon found the unbroken stillness grow oppressive. He wanted to speak, but there was no one to listen. He had felt himself, like the psalmist's solitary sparrow on the housetop, desolate and forlorn, and now he enjoyed even his wife's wordy narrations with a zest which surprised himself as much as it gratified her.
She was pouring forth a continuous stream of ecclesiastical tittle tattle, about curates, choirs, congregations and preferments, which would have been idle talk and a sinful waste of time in her serious eyes if it had related to politics or the public offices, but seeing it was not the State which it remotely touched on, but the Church, she believed it both important and improving; for with her, Church, like charity, covered anything, and transmuted even back-biting into holiness.
Dionysius listened and ate his cakes. Human speech of any sort was much, after three whole weeks of silence, broken only by the heavy foot of his domestic, or the clatter of delf-breaking in the kitchen. Judith, again, was a good woman, he knew, and it was his duty to bear with her infirmities--and bear up under them, too, at times, which was a heavier task. Perhaps she was not in all respects as much to be admired and respected as he had persuaded himself when he married her, but at least he knew that she admired and respected him, which was much more important, and very soothing.
Miss Betsey had breakfasted, and being in haste to divulge her experiences of travel, gaiety, and beaux, had walked along the village street to the post-office in hopes of meeting a gossip. She now returned with the family letters.
"Here you are, uncle! Four letters for you, and one of them registered--that means money. And here is one for you, auntie; everybody is in luck but me."