So George Rosewarne set out to bring back his daughters; not galloping, as an anxious parent might, but going ahead with a long, steady-going trot, which he knew would soon tell on Mrs. Trelyon's over-fed and under-exercised horses.
"If they mean Plymouth," he was thinking, "as is most likely from their taking the high-road, he'll give it them gently at first. And so that young man wants to marry our Wenna? 'Twould be a fine match for her; and yet she's worth all the money he's got—she's worth it every farthing. I'd give him the other one cheap enough."
Pounding along a dark road, with the consciousness that the farther you go the farther you've got to get back, and that the distance still to be done is an indeterminate quantity, is agreeable to no one, but it was especially vexatious to George Rosewarne, who liked to take things quietly, and could not understand what all the fuss was about. Why should he be sent on this mad chase at midnight? If anybody wanted to marry either of the girls, why didn't he do so and say no more about it? Rosewarne had been merely impatient and annoyed when he set out, but the longer he rode, and the more he communed with himself, the deeper grew his sense of the personal injury that had been done him by this act of folly.
It was a very lonely ride indeed. There was not a human being abroad at that hour. When he passed a few cottages from time to time the windows were dark. Then they had just been putting down a lot of loose stones at several parts of the road, which caused Mr. Rosewarne to swear. "I'll bet a sovereign," said he to himself, "that old Job kept them a quarter of an hour before he opened Paddock's Gate. I believe the old fool goes to bed. Well, they've waked him up for me, any way."
There was some consolation in this surmise, which was well founded. When Rosewarne reached the toll-bar there was at least a light in the small house. He struck on the door with the handle of his riding-whip, and called out, "Hi, hi! Job! Come out, you old fool!"
An old man with very bandy legs came hobbling out of the toll-house, and went to open the gate, talking and muttering to himself: "Ay, ay! so yü be agwoin' after the young uns, Maister Rosewarne? Ay, ay! yü'll go up many a lane and by many a fuzzy 'ill, and acrass a bridge or two, afore yü come up wi' 'en, Maister Rosewarne."
"Look sharp, Job!" said Rosewarne. "Carriage been through here lately?"
"Ay, ay, Maister Rosewarne! 'tis a good half hour agone."
"A half hour, you idiot!" said Rosewarne, now in a thoroughly bad temper. "You've been asleep and dreaming. Here, take your confounded money!"
So he rode on again, not believing, of course, old Job's malicious fabrication, but being rendered all the same a little uncomfortable by it. Fortunately, the cob had not been out before that day.