“It’s nothing of the sort—I go on to the bridge.”
“I know all about that.” And snatching up the reins she had dropped, “Gee-up!” he called suddenly.
“You’ll never get home that way,” said Jinny, smiling.
“Then how the hell——?” he began furiously.
“Shanks’s mare,” she reminded him again. “That’s not lame.”
He gave her a long, nasty look as though meditating the law of the stronger. But he tried pleading first.
“By the time I walk home, my mother’ll have locked up; thinking I’m sitting up with a patient.”
He winced. “You’ve got to carry me,” he said sullenly, “or I’ll have the law on you.”
“There’s no law to make me carry aught save goods.” And she sang on carelessly:
“_Should a humdrum husband say,_ _That at home I ought to stay——_”
The little voice, rippling through those demure lips, wellnigh stung him to close her mouth with the masterful gag of kisses, but a remnant of sanity warned him not to spoil a fine animal practice by a scandal. Besides Jinny had her whip, and what was still more formidable, her horn.
“I’ll be even with you for this!” And jumping down, he strode off furiously.
“Keep away from me!” It was at once an appeal and a warning.
“Don’t you want your case of instruments? Not that you’ll be in time to kill those poor horses to-night.”
With an unsmothered oath he turned back and clambered into the interior, upsetting Nip’s basket in his fury; the result of which neglect to let sleeping dogs lie was that the unsagacious animal mounted growling guard over the instrument-case, as before a burglar.
“You’d best get it for me,” he said sullenly. “And by the way, how much do I owe you?”
“Never mind,” she said blandly, handing him his burden. “You promised to be even with me.”
“The little vixen!” he thought, as he trudged towards a farm where he remembered doctoring a horse. “She ought to be put in the ducking-pond! What a lucky escape!”
_I remember the black wharves and the slips_ _And the sea-tides tossing free,_ _And Spanish sailors with bearded lips_ _And the beauty and mystery of the ships_ _And the magic of the sea._ LONGFELLOW, “My Lost Youth.”
BLACKWATER HALL, the home of Daniel Quarles and his granddaughter, was none of your old manor-houses with mullioned windows and carven music-galleries, fallen in grandeur and rent. It had barely done yeoman’s service, being just a low whitewashed and thatched cottage, whose upper windows under the overhanging eaves seemed deep-set eyes under jutting brows. Nor was it near the Blackwater, though from its comparatively high ground the broadening river first began to glimmer on the view when you came to the edge of Bradmarsh Common and looked across its brown expanse towards the bluish haze of the background.