“Oh, my dear, my love, don’t go from me like this! Why are you always so kind and good and gentle to me? Why don’t you strike me, or laugh at me, or call me harsh names—anything that should teach me how bad I am and how shamefully I treat you? Dear heart, I’ve been horrid to you all day—won’t you tell me that I’ve been horrid?” She looked up into his face and gently shook him.
He looked down at her, held her close, and laughed happily. “No, I couldn’t tell you that,” he said slowly, “because it wouldn’t be true, ’Linda dear. We can’t always be alike, you know, and if the world doesn’t go right with you sometimes—well, I suppose that isn’t your fault. You’re always a great deal too good to me, much more than I deserve, and I wouldn’t have you different for all the world. Whether you’re glad or sorry, or whether you say the sweetest things to me to tease me, you’re just ’Linda, and that’s all I want. You mustn’t fret, dear; you’ve done nothing that I should call you harsh names for; there’s nothing you could do—now or at any time—that could possibly be wrong. Don’t you understand that? It’s just because I love you, and think there’s no one like you in the world, that I think everything you do is right. I don’t seem to be able to say exactly what’s in my heart, but I think you know.”
“If you knew sometimes how miserable I feel after I’ve behaved badly to you—how I cry myself to sleep sometimes, thinking about it—you wouldn’t think so badly of me,” she said.
“But, my darling, I don’t think badly of you. Don’t I tell you that everything you do is right?”
“Oh, if you will only always think that; if you will be content with me just as I am; if you will remember only all my good days and forget all the bad ones!”
“But there are no bad days,” he replied generously. “Indeed, I have nothing to forgive or to forget. How could I have? Why, it just shows what a wonderful little woman you are, that you could run out here again to-night and say all this to me just because you thought that you’d been unkind to me. And you hadn’t been unkind at all. There, good-night, and don’t cry yourself to sleep, will you?”
They parted happily enough, and he watched her as she ran back to the house. Turning slowly at last, with lingering feet he passed out of the garden. As he reached the road a man brushed close against him and glanced up sharply into his face in the darkness, then passed on. Comethup, with a muttered word of apology, went his way.
In a few moments, however, he had an uncomfortable sensation that the man was following him—keeping well out of sight in the shadows of doorways, but still doggedly following. The young man stopped once or twice, and the man immediately stopped too and disappeared; when Comethup went on again the man’s step could be distinctly heard behind. At last, with a growing feeling of anger, Comethup swung round and quickly retraced his steps; the movement was so sudden that the man was taken by surprise and stopped falteringly, evidently not quite knowing what to do. He was an old man, much bent about the shoulders—apparently not from age, but rather as a result of heavy labour of some kind.
Comethup stared at him for a moment, and then, as the man glanced up again at him and made a movement to get past him, Comethup knew him; it was old Medmer Theed. His anger died away, and he held out his hand to the old man. “Why, Theed,” he exclaimed, “I couldn’t make out who on earth was dodging along behind me; I had no idea it was you. How are you?”
“I am well, I thank you,” replied the old man a little distrustfully. “You are out late, sir.”