“Well, I'm pretty tired, but I'm here for a reason, you know.”
“Oh!” evidently relieved; “I thought possibly that was it; you didn't get any chance, then, to have a word with Donald?”
“No; there didn't seem to be any way to manage, so I just kept my room. Some day soon I'm going to tell them here all about myself, but I want to do it in my own time and way, and not seem pushed to it because of Donald's coming, and as though I only told because I thought I couldn't keep them longer from knowing.”
“Look here, Ted, I'll manage this thing for you,” said Harry, after a few moments' silence. “I'll drop in to breakfast in the morning, and I'll contrive somehow to get the boy in here for a word with you as soon as he shows his face below stairs.”
“Agreed,” answered Ted.
“Well, then, good-night, and do you get a good rest, so that Mrs. Hartley will not think me wholly unfit in future to act as guardian on your drives.”
True to his word, bright and early the next morning Harry unbolted the outer door of the inn at Nuneham, where no one was yet stirring, and started for his two-mile walk to the Hartleys'. It was a glorious July morning, the air clear as a bell, and a bird here and there carolling with all the abandon of June in the hedgerows.
One after the other he passed the typical little English farms that skirt the roadway, seeming in their trim perfection and miniature proportions more like toys to unaccustomed eyes.
It was only half-past six by the time he reached the Hartleys', and Donald, as good fortune would have it, had just come downstairs and was standing right in the doorway. Donald, who had been absent on a tour of the farm with Chris when Harry was at the house the night before, at once surmised who the new-comer was, but gazed in blank amazement, none the less, as Harry, calling him by name, commanded him rather imperatively to stay just where he was for a moment. Then opening Ted's door, Harry said in a loud whisper:
“He's just outside here, and there's no one else within gun-shot; shall I bring him in?”