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The doctor seemed delighted to see our guest; they were evidently the warmest friends, and I saw a look of affectionate confidence in their eyes. The good man left his carriage to speak to us, but as he took Mrs. Blackett's hand he held it a moment, and, as if merely from force of habit, felt her pulse as they talked; then to my delight he gave the firm old wrist a commending pat.
George, too, cast his eyes aloft, and there, to his utter dismay, were dimly seen through the smoke a couple of female forms peeping from the topmost corridor. He knew well enough by sight Mr. Blackett's little daughter of eleven and her governess, a stately old lady, said to be an impoverished relative of the Squire himself.
Tact is after all a kind of mindreading, and my hostess held the golden gift. Sympathy is of the mind as well as the heart, and Mrs. Blackett's world and mine were one from the moment we met. Besides, she had that final, that highest gift of heaven, a perfect self-forgetfulness.
Colonel Rhodes's battered body had been picked up; Blackett's could not be distinguished, but doubtless the gallant lad was one of the mass of victims whose remains were mangled beyond recognition. Captain Fairburn took no further part in the siege of Tournai. After a month of terrible fighting, all but the citadel was captured by the Allies, and five weeks saw that also in their possession.
But there the likeness ended. Matthew Blackett's father was a rich man and descended from generations of rich men. He owned a large colliery and employed many men and not a few ships. He was, moreover, a county magnate, and held his head high on Tyneside. In politics he was a strong supporter of the Tory party, and had never been easy under the rule of Dutch William.
"He needn't break his spirit so far's to come in. He'll know you need him for something particular, an' then we can call to him as he comes up the path. I won't put him to no pain." Mrs. Blackett's old face, for the first time, wore a look of trouble, and I found it necessary to counteract the teasing spirit of Almira.
At a later hour Sergeant Oborne informed Fairburn that he had carried Captain Blackett's paper about with him for some little time, having had no opportunity of passing it on to any likely Englishman, or having forgotten it when he had the opportunity. The slaughter at Malplaquet was terrible on the side of the Allies, amounting to 20,000, or one-fifth of the whole number engaged.
Whatever might be the good of the reunion, I was going to have the pleasure and delight of a day in Mrs. Blackett's company, not to speak of Mrs. Todd's. The early morning breeze was still blowing, and the warm, sunshiny air was of some ethereal northern sort, with a cool freshness as it came over new-fallen snow.
Very often in talking to girls and preparing them for life, the whole question of flirtation and nonsense is left out there is not even as much said as in Mrs. Blackett's village, where the clergyman's wife put every girl through a special catechism before she left to go to service, part of which was, "Lads, Sally?"
"The first was at the mound into the tyning by Master Blackett's house at Iccomb; old Dobbin breasted it, and the stones did rattle round mine ears like a house a-coming down. We made a shard that let the rest of 'em through. It was the only wall that came in the way of the chase to-day. The second downfall was at the brook by Bourton-Windrush, I think they call it.
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