"Do not harass yourself or allow any one to be overworked on my account. My dress can stand over till another week, if necessary."
"Thank you very much," replied Miss Pritchard. "It will probably be ready, but it is a relief to have your permission to leave it over."
Some other shopping had to be done, and sundry commissions executed for Mrs. Ellicott before they met the carriage at an appointed place. These completed, they started homeward.
Hollingsby Hall and village had no railway station very near to the bulk of the houses. The village was long and straggling, and the station was about half a mile distant from the end farthest from the Hall. Its position had been chosen so that it might be about equidistant from Hollingsby and another larger village, and as the inhabitants of both were wont to say, "It couldn't have been planted awkwarder for all parties if they'd had a judge and jury to settle where it should be." From which remark it will be divined that the rural mind had decided against the collective wisdom of these institutions.
A little before the carriage reached the station, Mountain pulled up, to wait until a passenger train had started and the gates been opened for him to drive across the line. As they waited, Kathleen noticed a boy intently watching the departure of the train, and waving his cap frantically to some passenger. There was no mistaking the little figure. It was Ralph Torrance, and Captain Jack was returning his boy's farewell by waving his hand from the carriage window. The father's eyes were far too intent upon Ralph to notice the Mountford carriage and its occupants, but Kathleen had time to think of what she saw.
"He is going away again, and without Ralph, so most likely he will not be long absent," she thought. Both ideas gave her a certain amount of pleasure. She was not sorry that Captain Torrance would be unlikely to cross her path again immediately. She would have been sorry, for Ralph's sake, to think that the boy would be left alone for any length of time. At least, Kathleen tried to persuade herself that pity for the lonely child was her reason for wishing his father a speedy return.
Both the cousins saw Ralph starting homeward on foot, and noticed that he was a great deal altered by his recent illness. He had passed through the turnstile, and was on the road, before the way was clear for the carriage, but as it passed him he took off his cap and stood aside, his dark curly head bared, and looking the very image of his father.
A moment after Mountain was signalled to stop, and Kathleen called to Ralph, who was slowly following.
"Would you like a seat with us, Ralph?" she said. "You look tired."
"If you please, Miss Mountford," replied the boy, and gladly took his place opposite Kathleen, adding as soon as he was settled in it, "Father did not know I should be at the station to see him off. He said good-bye to me after breakfast. He was calling somewhere between home and the station, and he did not want to take me with him. Besides, Kelpie—that's my very own pony, you've seen him often, Miss Mountford—had cast a shoe, and was gone to the smithy, so I couldn't ride. But I meant seeing father off, for all that, so I just ran to the station by the short cut across the fields, and was there in time. Only he was in the carriage and they were shutting the doors, so we could only wave to one another. I'm glad I went, and father wouldn't know that I was walking. He would think Kelpie had come back in time, and that I should ride home. Else he'd have been sorry, perhaps, and afraid of me being tired."