"Have you come to tell me that I am to go in and dance reels with old Mr. Finlayson?" she said. "It is really so much pleasanter out here. Do sit down and talk to Sir Anthony and me."
She would never have allowed one to know that one was in the way, even if one had interrupted a proposal of marriage.
Anthony made room for me on the bench, and said heartily, "I am awfully glad to see you able to sit up like this, Hugo. Why, man, you're getting as strong as a horse!"
"Oh. I'm all right again," I said. "I'll begin to grow a new leg soon. And the first thing I mean to do when that happens is to dance reels like the Finlaysons."
"I believe I ought to be going in to supper now with Mr. Finlayson," said Mrs. Fielden. "Does any one know what time it is? He said he would 'conduct me to the dining-hall' at twelve o'clock."
"It is a quarter past now," said Anthony, looking at his watch in the moonlight. "Don't go in, Mrs. Fielden. Wait out here, and talk to Hugo and me."
But old Finlayson in his kilt had tracked us to our seat underneath the beech-trees, and he took instant possession of our fair neighbour, and told us to follow presently. He thought all the supper-tables were full just now.
"We shan't eat everything before you come," said hospitable old Finlayson, walking away with his beautiful partner on his arm.
Mrs. Fielden was dressed in white satin, with some pretty soft stuff about her, and she wore some white heather in her hair.
"What a good sort she is!" said Anthony in a loud voice, almost before Mrs. Fielden was out of hearing.
It wasn't, perhaps, the most poetical way in which he could have put it, but one didn't want or expect Anthony to express himself poetically.
"Utterly spoilt!" I replied, because at that moment I happened to be feeling supremely miserable, and I did not want Anthony to know it.
"Not a bit," he replied; "and you know that as well as I do, old chap."
"Allow me, Anthony," I said, "to be as savage as I like; it is one of the privileges of a cripple."
"Oh, blow cripples!" said Anthony. "You will be shooting next autumn, man."
"And what will you be doing?" I said. After all, we have been pals all our lives, and I think Anthony might tell me about it if there is anything to tell.