Laid up in Lavender

by Stanley John Weyman

"So!" Woolley muttered, his fingers closing like a vise on the doctor's arm. "Let me deal with this."

CHAPTER III

The walk which roused so much indignation in Edgar Woolley's breast had been one of more than common interest; as perhaps something in the faces of the returning couple assured him. There is a point in the journey towards intimacy at which one or other of the converging pair turns the conversation inwards, disclosing his or her hopes, fears, ambitions. Pleasance in the purest innocence had reached this stage to-day; arriving at it by the road of that silence which is tolerable only when some progress has been made towards friendship, and which even then invites attack. The tall gentleman, having lopped and picked at her bidding, gathered up the last scraps of the hawthorn which he had ruthlessly broken from the tree. He turned to find his companion gazing into distance with a shadow on her face. "Your thoughts are not pleasant ones, I fear," he said, half lightly, half seriously. "A penny were too much for them."

"I was thinking of Mr. Woolley," she answered simply.

"Indeed!" he said, surprised. He was more surprised when she poured out of a full heart the story of her father's debt to his assistant, and of the mortgage on the old house which the Partridges had owned for generations, and which was to her father as the apple of his eye. She let fall no word of Woolley's position in regard to herself. But the voice has subtle inflections, and men's apprehensions are quick where they are interested--and he was interested here. Her story omitted little which he could not conjecture.

"I am sorry to hear this," he said, after a pause. "But money troubles--after all, money troubles are not the worst troubles." He raised his hat and walked for a moment bareheaded.

"But this is not merely a money trouble," she answered warmly. She was wrapped up in her own distresses, and did not perceive at the moment that he had reverted to his. "We shall lose that."

They had reached the crown of the hill, and as she spoke she pointed to the Old Hall lying below them, its four gables, its stone front, its mullioned windows warmed into beauty by lichens and sunlight. "We shall lose that!" she repeated, pointing to it.

"Yes," the stranger said, with a quick glance at her. "I understand. And I do not wonder that it grieves you. It has always been your home, I suppose?" She nodded. "And your father thinks it must go?" he continued, after a pause given to deep thought, as it seemed.

"He thinks so."