"Going there for some luncheon?"
Hardwicke supposed so.
"Can't you get young Thorne to go with you? He looks utterly exhausted."
Hardwicke went off on his mission, but he could not persuade him to stir. "All right!" he said at last: "then I shall bring you something to eat here." Percival agreed to that compromise, and owned afterward that he felt better for the food he had taken.
The slow hours of the afternoon went wearily by. The rector of Fordborough came; Dr. Grey came again; Mrs. Latimer passed two or three times. The sky began to grow red toward the west once more, and the cawing rooks flew homeward, past the window where Percival sat waiting vainly for the summons which did not come.
Hardwicke, released from his self-imposed duty, came to see if Percival would go with him for half an hour or so to the Latimer Arms. "I've got a kind of tea-dinner," he said—"chops and that sort of thing. You'd better have some." But it was of no use. So when he came back to the house the good-natured fellow brought some more provisions, and begged Lucy Greenwell to make some tea, which he carried up.
"Where are you going to spend the night?" asked Harry, coming up again when he had taken away the cup and plate.
"Here," said Percival. He sat with his hands clasped behind his head and one leg drawn up on the seat. His face was sharply defined against the square of sunset sky.
Hardwicke stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at him. "But you can't sleep here," he said.
"That doesn't matter much. Sleeping or waking, here I stay."