u want me to
ask him--"

Her beautiful blue eyes were filled with tears. He stopped abruptly.
"I'll go and ask Dangle," he said, shortly. "If you wish it." And went
striding into the station and down the steps, leaving her in the road
under the quiet inspection of the two little boys, and with a kind of
ballad refrain running through her head, "Where are the Knights of the
Olden Time?" and feeling tired to death and hungry and dusty and out of
curl, and, in short, a martyr woman.

XXXI.

It goes to my heart to tell of the end of that day, how the fugitives
vanished into Immensity; how there were no more trains how Botley stared
unsympathetically with a palpable disposition to derision, denying
conveyances how the landlord of the Heron was suspicious, how the next
day was Sunday, and the hot summer's day had crumpled the collar of
Phipps and stained the skirts of Mrs. Milton, and dimmed the radiant
emotions of the whole party. Dangle, with sticking-plaster and a black
eye, felt the absurdity of the pose of the Wounded Knight, and abandoned
it after the faintest efforts. Recriminations never, perhaps, held the
foreground of the talk, but they played like summer lightning on the
edge of the conversation. And deep in the hearts of all was a galling
sense of the ridiculous. Jessie, they thought, was most to blame.
Apparently, too, the worst, which would have made the whole business
tragic, was not happening. Here was a young woman--young woman do I say?
a mere girl!--had chosen to leave a comfortable home in Surbiton, and
all the delights of a refined and intellectual circle, and had rushed
off, trailing us after her, posing hard, mutually jealous, and now tired
and weather-worn, to flick us off at last, mere mud from her wheel, into
this detestable village beer-house on a Saturday night! And she had
done it, not for Love and Passion, which are serious excuses one may
recognise even if one must reprobate, but just for a Freak, just for a
fantastic Idea; for nothing, in fact, but the outraging of Common Sense.
Yet withal, such was our restraint, that we talked of her still as one
much misguided, as one who burthened us with anxiety, as a lamb astray,
and Mrs. Milton having eaten, continued to show the finest feelings on
the matter.

She sat, I may mention, in the cushioned basket-chair, the only
comfortable chair in the room, and we sat on incredibly hard,
horsehair things having antimacassars tied to their backs b