Part 5 (1/2)
After London, the country was deliciously fresh and cool. Jimmy felt, as the scent of the hedges came to him, that the only thing worth doing in the world was to settle down somewhere with three acres and a cow, and become pastoral.
There was a marked lack of traffic on the road. Once he met a cart, and once a flock of sheep with a friendly dog. Sometimes a rabbit would dash out into the road, stop to listen, and dart into the opposite hedge, all hind legs and white scut. But except for these he was alone in the world.
And gradually there began to be borne in upon him the conviction that he had lost his way.
It is difficult to judge distance when one is walking, but it certainly seemed to Jimmy that he must have covered five miles by this time. He must have mistaken the way. He had certainly come straight.
He could not have come straighter. On the other hand, it would be quite in keeping with the cheap subst.i.tute which served Spennie Blunt in place of a mind that he should have forgotten to mention some important turning. Jimmy sat down by the roadside.
As he sat, there came to him from down the road the sound of a horse's feet, trotting. He got up. Here was somebody at last who would direct him.
The sound came nearer. The horse turned the corner; and Jimmy saw with surprise that it bore no rider.
”Hullo!” he said. ”Accident? And, by Jove, a side saddle!”
The curious part of it was that the horse appeared in no way a wild horse. It did not seem to be running away. It gave the impression of being out for a little trot on its own account, a sort of equine const.i.tutional.
Jimmy stopped the horse, and led it back the way it had come. As he turned the bend in the road, he saw a girl in a riding habit running toward him. She stopped running when she caught sight of him, and slowed down to a walk.
”Thank you _so much_,” she said, taking the reins from him. ”Oh, Dandy, you naughty old thing.”
Jimmy looked at her flushed, smiling face, and uttered an exclamation of astonishment. The girl was staring at him, open-eyed.
”Molly!” he cried.
”Jimmy!”
And then a curious feeling of constraint fell simultaneously upon them both.
CHAPTER V.
”How are you, Molly?”
”Quite well, thank you, Jimmy.”
A pause.
”You're looking very well.”
”I'm feeling very well. How are you?”
”Quite well, thanks. Very well, indeed”
Another pause.
And then their eyes met, and at the same moment they burst out laughing.
”Your manners are _beautiful_, Jimmy. And I'm so glad you're so well!
What an extraordinary thing us meeting like this. I thought you were in New York.”