That bore of bores—a tedious male cousin!—Old Play.
Loitering slowly onward from stile to stile, from field to field, and from pasture to pasture, the two ladies at last reached a country road leading right through the heart of the parish, and commanding from time to time a view of the distant sea. They found Fensea, as usual, fast asleep, basking in the midst of its own breath; the red-tiled houses dormant, the population invisible, save in the square or market-place opposite the tavern, where a drowsy cart-horse was blinking into a water trough, and a somnambulistic ostler was vacantly looking on. Even in the open shops such as Radford the linendraper’s and Summerhayes the grocer’s, nothing seemed doing. But just as they left the village behind them, and saw in front of them the spire of the village church peeping through the trees, they suddenly came face to face with a human being who was walking towards them in great haste and with some indications of ill-temper.
‘Ah, here you are!’ ejaculated this individual. ‘I have been hunting for you up and down.’
He was a man under thirty, and looking very little over twenty, though his face showed little of the brightness and candour of early manhood. His hair was cropped close and he was clean-shaven; his eyes were yellowish and large, of an expression so fixed and peculiar as to have been compared by irreverent friends to ‘hard-boiled eggs’; his forehead was low, his jaw coarse and determined. With regard to his dress, it was of the description known as horsey; short coat and tight-fitting trousers of light tweed, a low-crowned hat of the same material, white neckcloth fastened by a horseshoe pin.
This was George Craik, son of Sir George Craik, Bart., of Craik Castle, in the neighbourhood, and Alma’s cousin on her father’s side.
Alma greeted him with a nod, while he shook hands with her companion.
‘Did you ride over, George?’ she inquired.
‘Yes; I put my nag up at the George, and walked up to the Larches. Not finding you at home, I strolled down to the vicarage, thinking to find you there. But old Bradley is not at home; so I suppose there was no attraction to take you.’
The young lady’s cheek flushed, and she looked at her relation, not too amicably.
‘Old Bradley, as you call him (though he is about your own age, I suppose), is away in London. Did you want to see him?’