Moxon's
room. The poor suffering lady, who was extended on an inclined couch
below the window, looked down at them, and saw Harry standing at Miss
Hoyden's head, with docile Brownie's bridle on his left arm, and Bessie,
with the fine end of her slender whip, teasing the dark fuzz of his
hair. They made a pretty picture at the gate, laughing and chattering
their confidences aloud.
"What did Harry Musgrave say to your news, Bessie?" her father asked as
they rode away from the vicar's house.
"I forgot to tell him!" cried she, pulling up and half turning round.
"I had so much to hear." But Mr. Carnegie said it was not worth while to
bring Harry out again from his books. How fevered the lad looked! Why
did not Moxon patronize open windows?
The road they were pursuing was a gradual long ascent, which brought
them in sight of the sea and of a vast expanse of rolling heath and
woodland. When they reached the top of the hill they breathed their
horses a few minutes and admired the view, then struck into a
bridle-track across the heath, and regained the high-road about a mile
from Beechhurst. Scudding along in front of them was the familiar figure
of Miss Wort in her work-a-day costume--a drab cloak and poke bonnet,
her back up, and limp petticoats dragging in the dust. She turned
swiftly in at the neat garden-gate that had a green space before it,
where numerous boles of trees, lopt of their branches, lay about in
picturesque confusion.
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