"Good gracious, Mr. Rossitur, you don't mean to say you've gone and lost your voice as well? Though I'm not surprised, sleeping at that inn where I'm sure they never air the sheets and standing about without a coat on."
"I—beg your pardon. Good evening. My cold really is better. Thank you very much—Yes, I must go—in a hurry——"
"In a hurry to be standing moonstruck again? You'd better by half go up and talk to John a bit and have a glass of hot lemonade. He's all by himself. I've got to go and see Mrs. Watts. She's rather ill to-night. But I shan't be long away and John would like the company. You go right on in. You look half starved. It's a real frost to-night."
"I'm all right. Really. It's awfully good of you, but I mustn't really."
He felt for his hat, remembered that he had lost it, bowed awkwardly, and hurried off down the road.
This was awful. Why on earth had he ever gone to the house, or even let them be kind to him? What would Mrs. Robson say if she knew how he had been talking at the inn? Really, it had not been necessary to say quite so much perhaps. Yet when he once started, the Lord only knew where he would stop.
He stumbled forward under the moon—the round white moon that had watched him through the window of the inn. It stared at him, unblinkingly, from a clear sky.
David stopped short and suddenly shook his fist at it.
"You may stare as hard as you like," he stormed. "Looking so wise, smiling in such a superior way! I know I'm an ass, but I know too that it's a good deal more sensible to make a fool of yourself over the right thing, than to be a model of decorum over the wrong ones. Mrs. Robson's as kind and sensible as anyone could be, but she's wrong, wrong, wrong, and you know it. And I'm right—though I some times wish to Heaven I weren't. So there!"
Then, because he was very tired and hungry, David went back to eat his bread and cheese at the inn. It was "after hours," so he missed his beer.