Imprudence Part 11

"If it is becoming, I don't believe you like it very well," she said.

"It makes you look old--perhaps that's why," he answered, and thought with regret of the little girl who had given place to this tall and gracious young woman.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

Matilda's departure from the family circle made strangely little difference. She had made no particular place for herself in the home which she had occupied for thirty years, had established no claim on any member of her family. If anyone missed her, it was Prudence: Matilda had been the most amiable of her elder sisters; but she had never been in any sense of the word a companion. The first Mrs Graynor's family, with the exception of the younger son, were none of them companionable; they were self-contained and reserved, and lacking in those qualities of individuality and initiative which make for the breaking away from tradition and the following a line of one's own. Matilda was naturally submissive. She had submitted uncomplainingly to Agatha's rule all her life; and she left one submission for another, and, in accordance with the dictates of the marriage service, which Prudence considered degrading and Matilda thought beautiful, became subject willingly to the dominating and not particularly chivalrous authority of her husband.

Had Mr Jones succeeded in winning the sister whom he had coveted, he would have found this comfortable arrangement of relationship reversed.

There was no apt.i.tude for submission in Prudence.

On one point after Matilda's marriage Prudence was firm: she refused to be chaperoned on her walks by one of the remaining sisters. Matilda's presence she had suffered as a protection against the curate's advances; since these advances were no longer to be dreaded, she refused to be shadowed in future, and in order to escape from the annoyance took to cycling, a form of exercise which none of the elder Miss Greynors would attempt.

Her cycling took her far afield, and brought many new pleasures into her life. Miss Agatha tried to veto the idea; but Prudence, backed by her father's permission, and in possession of a fine new machine which he bought for her, defied opposition and rode forth whenever the weather permitted in quest of new experiences. Sometimes she met with adventures, and got into unexpected and informal conversations with strangers encountered surprisingly in little outlying villages where she dismounted to rest and quench her thirst. Cycling in its early stages is very thirsty work. She never mentioned those experiences at home; not that she was naturally secretive, but she held a strong conviction that such harmless amus.e.m.e.nt would meet with disapproval; and life had taught her that it is wisest to avoid unpleasantness.

And once she met with an accident. That had to be admitted because it could not by any means be suppressed.

It was a silly sort of accident, which an experienced rider might have averted; and it left her injured in temper as much as physically hurt.

The bicycle suffered the greater damage. She was free-wheeling down hill with a broad open road ahead and nothing more formidable to pa.s.s than a leisurely farm cart, crawling up the steep incline, accompanied by an amiable sheep-dog which, until the cycle came abreast with it, was ambling comfortably within the shade at the back of the cart.

Apparently the sight of the girl on the cycle excited it. It rushed forward unexpectedly and, barking vociferously, got in front of her wheel. Prudence swerved violently in order to avoid it, overbalanced herself, and, before she quite realised what was happening, found herself in the road inextricably mixed up with her crumpled machine.

The dog, its feet planted deeply in the white dust, barked in enjoyment of this new kind of game.

The farmer pulled up his horse, and looked down upon their grouping with an expression of stolid amiability.

"'E won't 'urt 'ee," he called out rea.s.suringly, and whistled to the dog, which, disregarding its owner, continued to bark gleefully at the debris.

Prudence lifted a face pale with indignation to the speaker.

"'E won't 'urt 'ee," he repeated, and in case she needed further rea.s.surance, added comfortably: "'E's done it afore. 'E's that friendly. But you needn't be afraid; 'e won't hurt."

"Afraid!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, and sat up and looked around for her hat.

"He's done all the mischief he can. Get down, please, and wheel my machine as far as the cottage. I'll have to rest."

It dawning upon the man for the first time that the lady was annoyed with him, he proceeded to obey her instructions, curiously little resentful of her anger. While Prudence painfully regained her feet he righted the disabled cycle, and, after a glance at his horse to a.s.sure himself of his intention to stand, half-wheeled half-carried the machine to a cottage at the bottom of the hill, and propped it against the wall of the house.

"'E's that friendly," he reiterated, gently admonishing the dog which accompanied them delightedly. "'E always runs up to folk like that.

'E's done it afore. But 'e wouldn't 'urt anyone. It's just friendliness."

Prudence found nothing to say. She was already ashamed of her heat; but the man's amiable indifference exasperated her. This was due, not to any want of consideration, but to rustic obtuseness. He was urgently anxious to rea.s.sure her in regard to the dog; ladies were scared as a rule of dogs; he was also desirous of returning to his cart, the horse having views of its own about standing. He knocked on the cottage door, quite unnecessarily; two girls, who had witnessed the accident, having already appeared in the entrance. One of them was laughing immoderately, as though she considered the affair a huge joke, enacted for her special amus.e.m.e.nt; the other, and older girl, favoured her with a reproving look.

"Young lady's met with a accident," the man explained. "The dog done it; 'e's that friendly. She wants to rest a bit."

He left it at that, and hurried back to his cart. The elder girl invited the stranger to come inside, and the younger, following them, stood in the doorway, laughing. Prudence showed her annoyance.

"It wasn't so funny as you seem to think," she said, surveying her from a chair in indignant surprise.

"I know," the girl replied, her laughter trailing off into spasmodic giggles. "I don't know what makes me keep laughing. But it was funny seeing you in the road, an' the bicycle an' all. It made me fair screech. I'm glad you're not hurt."

"You'd like a gla.s.s of water, I expect?" said the older girl; and the younger, as if desirous of atoning for her misplaced merriment, hurried away to fetch it.

"I don't know how I shall get home," said Prudence, who was more concerned with this difficulty than with her bruises, although these were more considerable than she had thought at first. She had wrenched her ankle badly. "I'm ten miles from Wortheton, and my machine is twisted hopelessly--even if I could ride it, which at present I don't feel equal to doing. Could I get a conveyance near here?"

"No," answered the girl. "There's nothing but that cart that's gone on.

I don't know what you'll do."

They were not very helpful people, and there was no other house within sight. Prudence began to fear that she would be hung up there for the night. She wondered whether for a consideration the girl who had laughed so immoderately would walk to the nearest village and secure some sort of conveyance. She regretted that she had not commandeered the cart of the man whose dog was responsible for the mishap, but events had been too hurried to allow her time to realise the difficulties of getting home in her damaged condition. She appealed to the girl, who still stood surveying her with a wide grin of amus.e.m.e.nt, and who seemed by no means eager to undertake the mission. She looked out along the dusty road and up the steep hill, down which Prudence had sped to her undoing, and hesitated; then she picked up a hat which was lying on a chair and remarked that she would go up the road a bit and see if anyone were about.

Prudence sat on in the room, waiting in the company of the sister, with a blank feeling of hopelessness for the next event. This when it befell was so altogether unexpected that at the moment when she first caught sight of a motor, with the girl who had set forth on her reluctant search seated in the back, she almost discredited her senses. But the motor came to a stop in the roadway before the house, and the other girl, springing up and going to the window, remarked explanatorily over her shoulder:

"It's Major Stotford in his car. That's a rare bit of luck for you. I suppose Lizzie stopped him. She's got a cheek. He's lord of the manor over to Lis...o...b... It's all his property about here."

Lizzie burst in in great excitement.

"It's all right," she cried; "the Major'll drive you. Only you must be quick; he hates to be kept waiting."

She ran out again, and stood in the road staring admiringly at the rather heavy, handsome man who remained at the steering wheel, and only looked round when Prudence, walking with an unmistakable limp, emerged from the house, with the other girl behind her, and approached the car.

With his first casual glance at her the look of indifference gave immediate place to an expression of very real interest. What he had expected he hardly knew, certainly not what he saw. He raised his cap, and with an alertness he had not yet displayed, left the wheel and opening the door of the car stepped into the road.

"I don't know how to thank you," said Prudence. "It's most awfully kind of you to come to the a.s.sistance of a stranger. I fear it will trespa.s.s on your time. I live at Wortheton; that's ten miles from here."

"Wortheton!" he said, and smiled charmingly. "My time is not so valuable that so heavy a call upon it need worry you. I'll sprint you home under the half-hour."

He held the door for her and helped her up. Lizzie had occupied the back seat, but plainly he preferred to have Prudence beside him.

"Is that your cycle?" he asked. "You _have_ had a spill."

"Yes. It will need to visit the doctor before I can ride it again," she said, and turned a look of regret on the damaged machine.

"So will you, by the look of things," he remarked, and scrutinised her more closely.

Prudence leaned down to take her farewell of, and recompense the sisters, who, sober enough now, watched the proceedings with interest.

"I'll send out for the cycle to-morrow," she said.

But Major Stotford saw no necessity for leaving the cycle behind.

"It will go in the back all right. We might as well take it along," he said, and lifted it into the car.

Lizzie, considerably more obliging than heretofore, lent a hand. When he had settled the machine he took his seat beside Prudence.

"Anyone we pa.s.s will conclude that I've run you down, and that I'm taking home the pieces," he said, smiling at her with curious intimacy, as the car took the long hill, and the girl leaned back white and weary against the cushions. He drew a flask from his pocket and handed it to her. "Don't look so horrified. If you could see the colour of your face you would realise as surely as I do that this is what you need.

Take a good pull at it and you'll feel better."

"I begin to believe that the lamp on my bicycle must once have belonged to Aladdin," Prudence said with a quiet little laugh of enjoyment. "I rubbed it to some purpose in the dust of the road. Whatever I require appears."

Major Stotford laughed with her. The thought in his mind, which he was careful not to express in words, was that she carried the magic within her. He leaned forward and altered the pace of the car, which had been running at top speed.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

"And now," Major Stotford remarked, as he turned in at the gates of Court Heatherleigh and drove slowly along the smooth gravelled path which led to the house, "for explanations. Beastly things, explanations, eh? Can't see the necessity for them myself."