"I didn't hit him very hard," I said, breaking a somewhat awkward silence; "but, you see, there are some things a gentleman cannot do. I think he understands now."
"Oh, Dick!" she said very softly; "and to think I could imagine you had done such a thing--you! and to think that you should let me think you had done such a thing--and all to shield that Imp! Oh, Dick! no wonder he is so fond of you. He never talks of anyone but you--I grow quite jealous sometimes. But, Dick, how did _you_ get into that boat?"
"By means of a tree with 'stickie-out' branches."
"That, as I told you before, I dropped in, as it were."
"First, that you let me remember everything you said to me while we were drifting down to the weir."
"The second lies in the fact that not far from the village of Down, in Kent, there stands an old house--a quaint old place that is badly in want of someone to live in it--an old house that is lonely for a woman's sweet presence and gentle, busy hands, Lisbeth!"
"No, I can't, and, besides, there's Dorothy coming--and--oh, Dick!"
"Why, Auntie," exclaimed Dorothy, as she came up, "how red you are! I knew you'd get sunburned, lying in that old boat without a parasol! But, then, she will do it, Uncle Dick--oh, she will do it!"
Everybody knew old Jasper Trent, the Crimean veteran who had helped to beat the "Roosians and the Proosians," and who, so it was rumoured, had more wounds upon his worn, bent body than there were months in the year.
The whole village was proud of old Jasper, proud of his age, proud of his wounds, and proud of the medals that shone resplendent upon his shrunken breast.
Any day he might have been seen hobbling along by the river, or pottering among the flowers in his little garden, but oftener still sitting on the bench in the sunshine beside the door of the Three Jolly Anglers.
Indeed, they made a fitting pair, the worn old soldier and the ancient inn, alike both long behind the times, dreaming of the past, rather than the future, which seemed to me like an invisible bond between them. Thus, when old Jasper fell ill, and, taking to his bed, had it moved opposite the window where he could lie with his eyes upon the battered gables of the inn--I for one could understand the reason.