'I was awake then,' said Dr. Arthur. 'And why you women don't put that thing down!'
'Arthur!' said Prim, half laughing but half fearful too, 'it's rather hard on the people who don't go, to tell them they ought to put a stop to it; and the people who do go, some of them, do it very innocently.'
'Yes!' said Dr. Arthur, 'and any man who takes such a young, pure face into the whirligig ought to be shot!'
'I daresay she'll marry Sir Henry Crofton,' said Mrs. Coles.
But Rollo did not seem terrified, and did not seem to pay much attention to the whole thing, she thought. He was rather silent the rest of the dinner; but so he had been the former part of it, ever since Dr. Arthur had come home to talk. To Prudentia he never said more words than were civilly necessary. As soon as dinner was over he mounted and rode away.
CHAPTER II.
WHAT COMES OF ON-DIT.
Wych Hazel had not wanted to come home. But neither did she at all wish to arouse Mr. Falkirk's suspicions by a too strenuous resistance; and besides, when he really made up his mind to a thing, she had to yield; so, with much secret trepidation, and a particularly wayward outside development, she made the journey; and late the next night after Dr. Arthur's revelations, laid her head on the pillows on her own room at Chickaree, with a strange little feeling of gladness, that half began to take the trepidation in hand. Wellit was not the end of September yet: she would have a little breathing space. And thenWych Hazel dropped asleep.
Things 'happen,' as we say, strangely sometimes. Threads which should lie smooth and straight alongside of each other and make no confusion, get all snarled, and twisted, and thrown crosswise of each other by just a little breeze of influence, or some slight impulse on one side. And so it fell next day.
Mrs. Powder, who had also been at Newport, and left it three days before Wych Hazel, had engaged her and Mr. Falkirk to lunch for this very day, the next after their arrival. That was one thread, not necessarily touching, one would say, the grand event of the day, which was Rollo's coming and visit at Chickaree. For that visit was to have been made right early in the morning, and Collingwood was ordered, and even mounted, when there came a message from the mills. Some complication or accident of business made the master's presence necessary. Rollo went to the Hollow, and stayed there till he had but just time left to get to Chickaree before luncheon. This thread was twisted.