"H'm--very well--you are your own mistress," he returned, in tones which seemed to assert otherwise. "Good-night;" and Melbury retreated towards the door.
"Don't be angry, father," she said, following him a few steps. "I have done it for the best."
"I am not angry, though it is true I have been a little misled in this. However, good-night. I must get home along."
He left the hotel, not without relief, for to be under the eyes of strangers while he conversed with his lost child had embarrassed him much. His search-party, too, had looked awkward there, having rushed to the task of investigation--some in their shirt sleeves, others in their leather aprons, and all much stained--just as they had come from their work of barking, and not in their Sherton marketing attire; while Creedle, with his ropes and grapnels and air of impending tragedy, had added melancholy to gawkiness.
"Now, neighbors," said Melbury, on joining them, "as it is getting late, we'll leg it home again as fast as we can. I ought to tell you that there has been some mistake--some arrangement entered into between Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers which I didn't quite understand--an important practice in the Midland counties has come to him, which made it necessary for her to join him to-night--so she says. That's all it was--and I'm sorry I dragged you out."
"Well," said the hollow-turner, "here be we six mile from home, and night-time, and not a hoss or four-footed creeping thing to our name. I say, we'll have a mossel and a drop o' summat to strengthen our nerves afore we vamp all the way back again? My throat's as dry as a kex. What d'ye say so's?"
They all concurred in the need for this course, and proceeded to the antique and lampless back street, in which the red curtain of the Three Tuns was the only radiant object. As soon as they had stumbled down into the room Melbury ordered them to be served, when they made themselves comfortable by the long table, and stretched out their legs upon the herring-boned sand of the floor.
Melbury himself, restless as usual, walked to the door while he waited for them, and looked up and down the street.
"I'd gie her a good shaking if she were my maid; pretending to go out in the garden, and leading folk a twelve-mile traipse that have got to get up at five o'clock to morrow," said a bark-ripper; who, not working regularly for Melbury, could afford to indulge in strong opinions.
"I don't speak so warm as that," said the hollow-turner, "but if 'tis right for couples to make a country talk about their separating, and excite the neighbors, and then make fools of 'em like this, why, I haven't stood upon one leg for five-and-twenty year."
All his listeners knew that when he alluded to his foot-lathe in these enigmatic terms, the speaker meant to be impressive; and Creedle chimed in with, "Ah, young women do wax wanton in these days! Why couldn't she ha' bode with her father, and been faithful?" Poor Creedle was thinking of his old employer.
"But this deceiving of folks is nothing unusual in matrimony," said Farmer Bawtree. "I knowed a man and wife--faith, I don't mind owning, as there's no strangers here, that the pair were my own relations--they'd be at it that hot one hour that you'd hear the poker and the tongs and the bellows and the warming-pan flee across the house with the movements of their vengeance; and the next hour you'd hear 'em singing 'The Spotted Cow' together as peaceable as two holy twins; yes--and very good voices they had, and would strike in like professional ballet-singers to one another's support in the high notes."
"And I knowed a woman, and the husband o' her went away for four- and-twenty year," said the bark-ripper. "And one night he came home when she was sitting by the fire, and thereupon he sat down himself on the other side of the chimney-corner. 'Well,' says she, 'have ye got any news?' 'Don't know as I have,' says he;'have you?' 'No,' says she, 'except that my daughter by my second husband was married last month, which was a year after I was made a widow by him.' 'Oh! Anything else?' he says. 'No,' says she.
And there they sat, one on each side of that chimney-corner, and were found by their neighbors sound asleep in their chairs, not having known what to talk about at all."
"Well, I don't care who the man is," said Creedle, "they required a good deal to talk about, and that's true. It won't be the same with these."
"No. He is such a projick, you see. And she is a wonderful scholar too!"
"What women do know nowadays!" observed the hollow-turner. "You can't deceive 'em as you could in my time."
