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Updated: May 26, 2025
Beechhurst was a thousand miles off, and yesterday a hundred years ago! The doctor and Harry Musgrave could hardly have walked back to Thunby's hotel before she and her new comrade were in their little beds. Now, indeed, was the Rubicon passed, and Bessie Fairfax committed to all the vicissitudes of exile.
They were drying their pink toes preparatory to putting on again their shoes and stockings as the strangers rode by. "Is this the way to Beechhurst, my little gypsy?" quoth the elder of the two, drawing rein for a moment. Bessie looked up with a sunburnt face under her loose fair hair. "Yes, sir," said she.
"To Kirkham understand, ma chérie, not to Beechhurst," said madame softly, warningly. "To Kirkham, so be it! Sooner or later I must go there," answered Bessie with brave resignation. Mr. Cecil Burleigh was apparently gratified by the young lady's consent, abrupt though it was. But madame's countenance fell. She was deeply disappointed at this issue.
Nevertheless, half an hour later, when my lady had transacted the business that brought her to Beechhurst so opportunely, Bessie found herself walking gently along the road at her side, and on her other hand her wicked grandfather, chatting of a variety of past events in as disengaged and pleasant a fashion as an old gentleman of sixty-five, fallen unexpectedly into the company of an old friend, could do.
Fairfax shrank from the awkwardness of the task, from the humiliation of it, and said, "Could not Short manage it by post, without a personal encounter?" Mr. Short thought not. Finally, it was agreed that if another week elapsed without bringing the promised answer from Mrs. Carnegie, they would go to Beechhurst together and settle the matter on the spot.
She slipped into the chair set for her beside him, and was quite at home, for Bessie was a favorite in the same degree at Brook as Harry was at Beechhurst. Young Christie sat next to his friend and opposite to Bessie. They had many things to say to each other, and Bessie compared them in her own mind silently.
I hate the idea of going away from Beechhurst!" and she laid her cheek against the doctor's rough whisker with the caressing, confiding affection that made her so inexpressibly dear to him. "Here is my big baby," said he. "A little more, and she will persuade me to say I won't part with her." Bessie flashed out impetuously: "Do say so! do say so! If you won't part with me, I won't go.
Fairfax objected that he disliked travelling in a fuss. The lawyer could return when their business was accomplished; as for himself, being in the Forest, he should make a tour of it, the weather favoring. And thus the journey was settled. There was not a lovelier spot within children's foot-range of Beechhurst than Great-Ash Ford. On a glowing midsummer day it was a perfect paradise for idlers.
Carnegie, light-hearted and light-footed, a picture of young content. The doctor, after one glance at her blithe face, thought that he could tell his wife when he got home who it was their little Bessie really loved. Harry Musgrave took his hat to set Christie part of the way back to Beechhurst in the opposite direction.
Bessie went in-doors to apprise her mother of the visitors who were at hand. Mr. Fairfax and Lady Latimer stood for a quarter of an hour or longer in the shade of the churchyard trees, exchanging news, the chief news being the squire's business at Beechhurst.
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