The great deerhound seemed to know, and rose and came to her with great gravity, while she clasped on the leash. He was no frisky animal to show his delight by yelping and gamboling, but he laid his long nose in her hand, and slowly wagged the down-drooping curve of his shaggy tail; and then he placidly walked by her side up into the hall, where he stood awaiting her.
She would go along and beg of her husband to leave his work for a day, and go with her for a walk down to Richmond Park. She had often heard Mr. Ingram speak of walking down, and she remembered that much of the road was pretty. Why should not her husband have one holiday?
“It is such a shame,” she had said to him that morning as he left, “that you will be going into that gloomy place, with its bare walls and chairs, and the windows so that you cannot see out of them!”
“I must get some work done somehow, Sheila,” he said, although he did not tell her that he had not finished a picture since his marriage.
“I wish I could do some of it for you,” she said.
“You! All the work you’re good for is catching fish and feeding ducks and planting things in gardens. Why don’t you come down and feed the ducks in the Serpentine?”
“I should like to do that,” she answered. “I will go any day with you.”
“Well,” he said, “you see, I don’t know until I get along to the studio whether I can get away for the forenoon; and then if I were to come back here, you would have little or no time to dress. Good-bye, Sheila.”
“Good-bye,” she said to him; giving up the Serpentine without much regret.
But the forenoon had turned out so delightful that she thought she would go along to the studio, and hale him out of that gaunt and dingy apartment. She should take him away from town; therefore, she might put on that rough, blue dress in which she used to go boating in Loch Roag. She had lately smartened it up a bit with some white braid, and she hoped he would approve.