She opened her eyes in astonishment. ‘What a wicked wish,’ was her reproachful comment.
‘We have made such a fuss about my going,’ he went on, turning things over in his mind, ‘that we shall look ridiculous to everybody when it becomes known that a stupid tumble off a horse has stopped me.’
‘I think we should only be ridiculous if we minded the foolish people who thought us so,’ she answered very wisely.
‘Ah, you never heard the story of the curate who in a moment of enthusiasm declared his intention of making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.’
‘What about him?’
‘“What about him?” The poor beggar was so worried by everybody he met afterwards asking in surprise how he had managed to get back from Jerusalem so soon—then why he hadn’t gone—when he was going—and looking as if he had perpetrated a fraud—that he was forced to make the pilgrimage in order to escape being called a humbug.’
‘But you are not a curate, and—I don’t think you are a humbug, Philip,’ she said with a twinkle of fun in her eyes.
‘I hope not,’ he rejoined, laughing. ‘But what can have induced Uncle Shield to change all his plans so suddenly?’
That question was a source of much marvel to them both. During the afternoon, an idea occurred to Madge, which seemed so extravagant, that at first she only smiled at it, as one smiles at the revelation of some pretty but absurd dream.
This was the idea: that in some way this sudden change of plans by Mr Shield was associated with her and the memory of her mother. She was nearer the truth than she imagined, although the more she thought over it, the more she was impressed by the possibility of the surmise finding some foundation in the motives which actuated Mr Shield’s present conduct.