“Oh!” said Betty. And for some minutes she said no more. Then she roused herself, poked the fire, and rang for the lamp.
CHAPTER XXVII
“Well,” said the Squire peevishly, “I can do no more. Girls ha’ their whimsies, and it’s much if you can hinder ’em running after Mr. Wrong without forcing ’em to take Mr. Right. At any rate I’ve said what I could for you, lad, and the end was as if I hadn’t. You must fight your own battle. Jos hasn’t”—this would never have occurred to the Squire in his seeing days—“too gay a life of it, and if you’re not man enough to get on the soft side of her, with a clear field, why, damme, you don’t deserve to have her.”
“I was well enough with her,” Arthur said resentfully, “till lately. But she is changed, sir.”
“Well, like enough. Girls are like that.”
“There may be—someone else.”
The Squire snorted. “Who?” he said. “Who?”—more roughly. “You’re talking nonsense.”
Arthur could not say who. He could not name anyone. So far as he knew there could not be anyone. But his temper, chafed by a week of suspense and anxiety, was not smoothed by the old man’s refusal to do more. And then to fail with Josina! To be rejected by Josina, the simple girl whom, in his heart, he had regarded as a pis alter, on whom he had designed to confer a half-contemptuous affection, on whose youthful fancy he had played for his pastime! This was enough to try him, apart from the fact that things in Aldersbury looked black, and that, losing her, he lost the consolation prize to which he had looked forward to make all good. So, taken to task by the Squire, he did not at once assent. “Who?” he repeated gloomily. “Ah, I don’t know.”
“Nor I!” the Squire retorted. “There is nobody. Truth is, my lad, the man who has been robbed sees a face in every bush. However, there ’tis. I’ve said my say, and I’ve done with it. Did you bring those deeds from Welsh’s?”
Arthur swallowed his mortification as best he might—fortunately the old man could not see his face. “Yes,” he said. “I left them downstairs.” The Squire had caught a cold, sitting out on the hill on the Saturday, and had been for some days in his bedroom.