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The dry-salters, on these occasions when they cast off for a night the cares and anxieties of dry-salting, do their guests well, and Derek had that bloated sense of foreboding which comes to a man whose stomach is not his strong point after twelve courses and a multitude of mixed wines.
"And we'll send Derek a wire for what it's worth." They went at once to the post-office, Felix composing this message on the way: 'Utterly mistaken chivalry you have no right await our arrival Felix Freeland. He handed it to her to read, and passed it under the brass railing to the clerk, not without the feeling of shame due from one who uses the word chivalry in a post-office.
Early that morning Derek had assembled twenty of the strongest laborers, and taken them a round of the farms to force the strike-breakers to desist. There had been several fights, in all of which the strike-breakers had been beaten. Derek himself had fought three times.
"But," continued Freddie, "he always has been frightfully under his mother's thumb, you know." Jill was conscious of a little flicker of irritation. "Don't be absurd, Freddie. How could a man like Derek be under anybody's thumb?" "Well, you know what I mean!" "I don't in the least know what you mean." "I mean, it would be rather rotten if his mother set him against you." Jill clenched her teeth.
Diane remained on the threshold of her room, and Derek in the hail outside, while, for mutual encouragement, they rehearsed once more the list of predicaments in which the young people might have found themselves without serious danger. Diane was about to withdraw, when a man ran down the hall calling: "The telephone! for the gentleman!" Derek started on a run, Diane following more slowly.
The use of this name being more convincing to Lucilla than pledges of assurance, she sped away to do his bidding; but it was not till after she had gone that Derek recognized the fact that the word had passed his lips. During the half-hour before the arrival of Mrs. Eveleth and Diane, Miss Lucilla's tact allowed Derek to have the library to himself.
She had remarked in Derek during the past few weeks a manner of fighting shy of Diane at variance with his usual method with women. Safety in flight was the course he commonly adopted; but since Diane appeared on the scene, Lucilla had noticed that it was flight with a curious tendency to looking backward.
"What it would mean?" "Well, your mother . . ." "Oh!" Derek dismissed Lady Underhill with a grand gesture. "Yes," persisted Jill, "but, if she disapproved of your marrying me before, wouldn't she disapprove a good deal more now, when I haven't a penny in the world and am just in the chorus . . ." A sort of strangled sound proceeded from Derek's throat. "In the chorus!" "Didn't you know?
No one could be better trusted than Frances Freeland to preserve him from looking on the dark side of anything, more specially when that thing was already not quite nice. Their conversation was therefore free from allusion to the laborers, the strike, or Bob Tryst. And Derek thought the more. The approaching trial was hardly ever out of his mind.
She took a sip from her glass, and the feeling that he had been going to laugh passed away. "It's about the daughter of a laborer, down there in Worcestershire, where he lives, not very far from Becket. He's my cousin, Derek, the son of my other uncle at Joyfields. He and his sister feel most awfully strongly about the laborers." "Ah!" said Mr. Cuthcott, "the laborers!
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