Old Sir Ensor looked much astonished. For forty
years he had been obeyed and feared by all around
him; and he knew that I had feared him vastly, before
I got hold of Lorna. And indeed I was still afraid
of him; only for loving Lorna so, and having to protect
her.
Then I made him a bow, to the very best of all I had
learned both at Tiverton and in London; after that
I waited for him to begin, as became his age and rank
in life.
“Ye two fools!” he said at last, with
a depth of contempt which no words may express; “ye
two fools!”
“May it please your worship,” I answered
softly; “maybe we are not such fools as we look.
But though we be, we are well content, so long as we
may be two fools together.”
“Why, John,” said the old man, with a
spark, as of smiling in his eyes; “thou art
not altogether the clumsy yokel, and the clod, I took
thee for.”
“Oh, no, grandfather; oh, dear grandfather,”
cried Lorna, with such zeal and flashing, that her
hands went forward; “nobody knows what John Ridd
is, because he is so modest. I mean, nobody except
me, dear.” And here she turned to me again,
and rose upon tiptoe, and kissed me.
“I have seen a little o’ the world,”
said the old man, while I was half ashamed, although
so proud of Lorna; “but this is beyond all I
have seen, and nearly all I have heard of. It
is more fit for southern climates than for the fogs
of Exmoor.”
“It is fit for all the world, your worship;
with your honour’s good leave, and will,”
I answered in humility, being still ashamed of it;
“when it happens so to people, there is nothing
that can stop it, sir.”
Now Sir Ensor Doone was leaning back upon his brown
chair-rail, which was built like a triangle, as in
old farmhouses (from one of which it had come, no
doubt, free from expense or gratitude); and as I spoke
he coughed a little; and he sighed a good deal more;
and perhaps his dying heart desired to open time again,
with such a lift of warmth and hope as he descried
in our eyes, and arms. I could not understand
him then; any more than a baby playing with his grandfather’s
spectacles; nevertheless I wondered whether, at his
time of life, or rather on the brink of death, he
was thinking of his youth and pride.
“Fools you are; be fools for ever,” said
Sir Ensor Doone, at last; while we feared to break
his thoughts, but let each other know our own, with
little ways of pressure; “it is the best thing
I can wish you; boy and girl, be boy and girl, until
you have grandchildren.”
Partly in bitterness he spoke, and partly in pure
weariness, and then he turned so as not to see us;
and his white hair fell, like a shroud, around him.
COLD COMFORT
[Illustration: 351.jpg Illustrated Capital]
