“A day or two after, as Frank was riding towards the farm to see his patient again, in a deep, narrow lane, he met the boy coming towards him. Now, he thought, I shall hear all about it. But he was mistaken; for the moment the lad recognised the tall, slender figure of the young doctor, he scrambled up the lofty bank, like a cat or a monkey, and bolted through the hedge into the field above.
“‘Hillo, hillo, there, boy!’ cried Frank, ‘I want to speak to you.’
“‘Nay, nay,’ cried the boy, ‘I’ll na come near thee. I knaw thee, I knaw thee! though thou’s got thy claiths on. I seed thee i’ th’ cupboard!’”
After a hearty laugh of the whole company, Thorsby said, “Well, take my word for it, the man who tells such stories, and enjoys them, is no despairing swain.”
“Not a bit of it,” said George Woodburn.
One fine May morning that spring, the sun was shining over the dewy landscape as genially as it used to shine before the dark days fell on Woodburn Grange. The larks were caroling as high and inspiringly in the blue air. The young corn was growing as greenly, and the weeders were in the midst of it with their spuds, rooting up the thistles, and with their hands pulling the bright yellow charlock out of it. From tree to tree rung the notes of the thrush and blackbird, and the cuckoo shouted her musical, quaint monotone from the new amber-coloured foliage of the spreading oak. The brooks rippled and tinkled so sweetly down the shadowy glens to the river, and the river glid along as fair and as peacefully as if it had never seen a winter or a crime. There was a glow of flowers along the luxuriant hedge-row banks. There was a golden fire of flowers all over the pastures, and a spirit of tranquil joy lay over all the scene, the outward image of the peace and joy which had once more returned to that pleasant neighbourhood.
All at once the bells of Hillmartin burst out with a merry peal, as if they had caught the contagion of happy nature, and sent their musical cadences over wood and valley, giving them the voice of delight, which seemed only wanting to communicate their full tide of new-born pleasure to the hearts of men. The next instant, the three old jangling bells of Cotmanhaye broke out into the best music that they could make, which was but indifferent, but yet had a note of gladness in it, like the voice of some uncouth labourer, whom nature never meant for a musician, but who goes homeward over the dusky slopes of evening, chanting discordantly some rude country song,—there was a happy heart in its limping clangour, which made it welcome. The discord mingling with the harmony of the bells of Hillmartin was toned down into a symphony which was familiar to the ears of the people of the neighbourhood, who knew that it meant, at least, rejoicing. At once the weeders in the corn, and the cottagers in the villages of Hillmartin and Woodburn, stood still, and said, “What is that for?” And presently, from one quarter or another came the answer, “It is a peal of welcome for Mr. George Woodburn, who last night brought home his wife to Bilts’ Farm.”
“Wife to Bilts’ Farm! Why, what wife?”
“Why, Miss Drury, to be sure!” was the answer of women’s unerring instincts. “Who else should it be?”
“And all forgotten and forgiven?” said the simple people, thoughtfully.