dear Annie in a
highly comforting manner; and she never would tell us about it (being
so shy and modest), whether in breathing his comfort to her he tried
to take some from her pure lips. I hope he did not, because that to me
would seem not the deed of a gentleman, and he was of good old family.

At this very moment, who should come into the end of the passage upon
them but the heavy writer of these doings I, John Ridd myself, and
walking the faster, it may be, on account of the noise I mentioned. I
entered the house with some wrath upon me at seeing the gazehounds in
the yard; for it seems a cruel thing to me to harass the birds in the
breeding-time. And to my amazement there I saw Squire Marwood among the
milk-pans with his arm around our Annie's waist, and Annie all blushing
and coaxing him off, for she was not come to scold yet.

Perhaps I was wrong; God knows, and if I was, no doubt I shall pay for
it; but I gave him the flat of my hand on his head, and down he went in
the thick of the milk-pans. He would have had my fist, I doubt, but for
having been at school with me; and after that it is like enough he would
never have spoken another word. As it was, he lay stunned, with the
cream running on him; while I took poor Annie up and carried her in to
mother, who had heard the noise and was frightened.

Concerning this matter I asked no more, but held myself ready to bear it
out in any form convenient, feeling that I had done my duty, and
cared not for the consequence; only for several days dear Annie seemed
frightened rather than grateful. But the oddest result of it was that
Eliza, who had so despised me, and made very rude verses about me, now
came trying to sit on my knee, and kiss me, and give me the best of the
pan. However, I would not allow it, because I hate sudden changes.

Another thing also astonished me--namely, a beautiful letter from
Marwood de Whichehalse himself (sent by a groom soon afterwards), in
which he apologised to me, as if I had been his equal, for his rudeness
to my sister, which was not intended in the least, but came of their
common alarm at the moment, and his desire to comfort her. Also he
begged permission to come and see me, as an old schoolfellow, and set
everything straight between us, as should be among honest Blundellites.

All this was so different to my idea of fighting out a quarrel, when
once it is upon a man, that I knew not what to make of it, but bowed to
higher breeding