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We set out after breakfast, Jane perched on a pony which Sabz Ali had raised or stolen, Hesketh in the dandy, and I on foot. After a warm five miles' march we came upon signs of a block. Vehicles of many and strange sorts were drawn up in the shade of a chenar, under whose wide branches the Baines family was faring sumptuously on biscuits and brandy and water.
Hesketh was lucky enough to share a room with a brother Lancer, and a mixed bag of Gunners and Hussars made up a cheery dinner-table. Poor dear, it was only sleep he wanted, for next morning he showed up, as his fond owner remarked, "bright as a button!" 12th.
But she was still thinking of Rickerl, bless her little heart! Lady Hesketh waved him a demure adieu from the open window, relented, and gave his hand a hasty squeeze with her gloved fingers. "Take care of Lorraine," she said, solemnly; then laughed at his telltale eyes, and leaned back on her husband's shoulder, still laughing.
Browning was, perhaps, somewhat beyond the comprehension of Job Hesketh, but he liked to hear me reading poetry aloud. "Whativer it is," he said, "Abe Verity knows all about it. He were allus a better scholar nor me, were Abe, sin first we went to schooil together; but I reckon I'll know all about it, too, when I've slipped t' leash an' started work at Heaven Steel Works."
But, except for the chaperons, the unmarried people did well enough, as unmarried people usually do when let alone. So, on that cloudless day of July, 1870, Rickerl von Elster sat in the green row-boat and tugged at the oars while Sir Thorald smoked a cigar placidly and Lady Hesketh trailed her pointed fingers over the surface of the water.
"It looks," said Octavius one evening in early February, "as if the Grits were getting a little anxious about South Fox high time, too. I see Cruickshank is down to speak at Clayfield on the seventh, and Tellier is to be here for the big meeting at the opera house on the eleventh." "Tellier is Minister of Public Works, isn't he?" asked Hesketh.
"We have two weeks to stay yet," said Cecil, glancing involuntarily at Betty Castlemaine; "we can get up a drive in a week." "You are not going, Cecil," said Betty, in a low voice, partly to practise controlling him, partly to see him blush. Lady Hesketh, however, took enough interest in the sport to insist, and Jack Marche promised to see the head-keeper at once.
The pretty waitress of the inn showed me the way, and a wheezing old man half gardener and half butler introduced me to the rooms where Cowper had passed so many a dreary hour, and where he had been cheered by the blithe company of Cousin Lady Hesketh.
She had planned it all with Hesketh, Hesketh, who was the daughter of a farmer on the Duddon estate, fifty years old, a born gossip, and acquainted with every man, woman and child in the neighbourhood. Did not Hesketh go to the same chapel with Thomas Dixon and his wife?
Eager to hail its signs, and profit by them, they waylaid him at the 'Spreading Ash, with "Hey, don't you dare to swallow a single glass in your own village, to give custom to your villager, man?" They waylaid and gathered round him in the market-place of Market Hesketh, with "Well met, Mr. Gervase Norgate. Lord! are you alive still? for we had doubted it.
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