When you are crying and kissing at the same time, you cannot hear
anything else, so what more the Old Squire said I do not know.
I picked up my basket and trowel at once, and fled homewards as fast
as I could go, which was not very fast, so breathless was I with tears
and shame and fright.
When I was safe in our grounds I paused and looked back. The Old
Squire was still there, shouting and gesticulating, and Saxon was at
his heels, and over the hedge two cows were looking at him; but the
rooks and the starlings were far off in distant trees and fields.
And I sobbed afresh when I remembered that I had been called a liar
and a thief, and had lost every one of my hose-in-hose; and this was
all that had come of trying to make an Earthly Paradise of Mary's
Meadow, and of taking upon myself the name of Traveller's Joy.
CHAPTER X.
I told no one. It was bad enough to think of by myself. I could not
have talked about it. But every day I expected that the Old Squire
would send a letter or a policeman, or come himself, and rage and
storm, and tell Father.
He never did; and no one seemed to suspect that anything had gone
wrong, except that Mother fidgeted because I looked ill, and would
show me to Dr. Solomon. It is a good thing doctors tell you what they
think is the matter, and don't ask you what you think, for I could not
have told him about the Squire.
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