CHAPTER IV.—IN THE OAK PARLOUR.
And so, it had been only a bit of Uncle Dick’s kindly forethought and common-sense which had prompted the alarming words he had spoken to Madge. How she and Philip laughed at the chimerical idea that there could be any possible combination of circumstances in time or space which could alter their thoughts regarding each other! The birds in the orchard, in the intervals of pecking the fruit, seemed to sing a joyous laughing chorus at the absurdity of it—notwithstanding that the admission of it might be prudent.
But when they came down to the point of vague admission that in the abstract and in relation to other couples—of course it could not apply to their own case—Uncle Dick’s counsel was such as prudent young people about to separate should keep in mind, an expression of perplexity flitted across Madge’s face. She looked at him with those tenderly wistful serious eyes, half doubting whether or not to utter the thought which had come to her.
‘But what I cannot understand,’ she said slowly, ‘is why Uncle Dick should have been in such a temper. You know that although he may fly into a passion at anything that seems to him wrong, he never keeps it up. Now he had all the time riding home from Kingshope to cool, and yet when he spoke to me he seemed to be as angry as if he had just come out of the room where the quarrel took place.’
‘What can it matter to us?’ was the blithe response. ‘He is not angry with me or with you, and so long as that is the case we need not mind if he should quarrel with all creation.’
‘I’ll tell you what we will do,’ she said, and the disappearance of all perplexity from her face showed that she was quite of his opinion, although she wanted to have it supported by another authority.
‘What is that?’
‘We will go in and ask Aunt Hessy what she thinks about it.... Are you aware, sir’ (this with a pretty assumption of severity), ‘that you have not seen aunty to-day, and that you have not even inquired about her?’
‘That is bad,’ he muttered; but it was evident that the badness which he felt was the interruption of the happy wandering through the orchard by this summary recall to duty.
In his remorse, however, he was ready to sacrifice his present pleasure; for Aunt Hessy was a stanch friend of theirs, and it might be that her cheery way of looking at things would dispel the last lingering cloud of doubt from Madge’s mind regarding the misunderstanding between his father and Uncle Dick.