“I have not seen him, but I know where he is,” answered Jacob; “and I don’t think he will show his nose outside the house without having me at his heels.”
Every day before going off for the night’s fishing in the Nancy, Jacob managed to find time to get up to Downside.
He would have been a bold man who would have ventured to encounter the young fisherman with any intention of annoying Maiden May. Honest love, when the object loved is to be benefited, wonderfully sharpens the wits. Jacob, who would never have thought of such a thing under other circumstances, had set a boy to watch the inn, and bring him word of Miles’s movements. When he was away, the lad was to inform his mother.
Miles, either in obedience to his father’s directions, or because he had found out that he was watched, kept himself a prisoner, and did not venture beyond the precincts of the garden at the back of the house, where he spent most of the day sauntering up and down, smoking his pipe, and forming plans for winning the young lady in spite of the obstacles in his way. Though unable to appreciate any higher qualities, he had been really struck by her beauty, and was as much in love as it was in his nature to be. He was thus perfectly ready to enter into any scheme which his father might propose for gaining her, either by fair means or foul.
“I would not hurt her feelings if I could help it,” he said to himself; “but I am pretty sure I have a rival in that young fellow Halliburt. I guessed that when she took his arm and ran off from me. She knows well enough that he is not her brother, though they have been brought up together, and girls are generally apt to admire those big, sturdy-looking chaps who have done them a service, more than well-dressed, gentlemanly young men like myself,” and Miles glanced approvingly on his new and fashionable costume. “If she still turns a cold eye upon me that worthy dad of mine must manage to get the young fisherman out of the way—it won’t do to have him interfering—and with a clear stage I shall not have insuperable difficulties to overcome, I flatter myself.”
Still Miles had to remain inactive some days longer. At last he received a note from his father telling him to go, if he pleased, to the fête at Texford, and simply state, if asked, that he was the son of a tenant, saying that he was spending a few days at Hurlston, and had come instead of his father, who was unable to attend. “I find that Dame Halliburt is going, and I have no doubt she will take her daughter, as she calls her, with her,” he added. “You will thus have an opportunity of meeting the girl under more favourable circumstances than before, and if you mind your P’s and Q’s it will be your own fault if you do not work yourself into her good graces.”
Miles received this communication with intense satisfaction. Having a thoroughly good opinion of himself, he had now little doubt that he should succeed in his enterprise.