The Weathercock Part 42

"My dear, for shame! yes, it's quite time he was back. I am growing quite uneasy."

"Been run over perhaps by the train."

"Oh, my dear!" cried Aunt Hannah in horrified tones. "But how could he be? The railway is not near where he has gone."

"Of course it isn't. There, come and sit down and don't be such an old fidget about that boy. You are spoiling him."

"That I am sure I am not, my dear."

"But you are--making a regular Molly of him. He'll be back soon. I believe if you had your own way you would lead him about by a string."

"Now that is nonsense, my dear," cried Aunt Hannah. "How can I help being anxious about him when he is late?"

"Make more fuss about him than if he was our own child."

Aunt Hannah made no reply, but sat down working and listening intently for the expected step, but it did not come, and at last she heaved a sigh.

"Yes, he is late," said the doctor, looking at his watch. "Not going anywhere else for you, was he?"

"Oh, no, my dear; he was coming straight back."

"Humph!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the doctor; "thoughtless young dog! I want my tea."

"He can't be long now," said Aunt Hannah.

"Humph! Can't be. That boy's always wool-gathering instead of thinking of his duties."

Aunt Hannah's brow wrinkled and she looked five years older as she rose softly to go to the window, and look out.

"That will not bring him here a bit sooner, Hannah," said the doctor drily. "I dare say he has gone in at the rectory, and Syme has asked him to stay."

"Oh, no, my dear, I don't think he would do that, knowing that we should be waiting."

"Never did, I suppose," said the doctor.

Aunt Hannah was silent. She could not deny the impeachment, and she sat there with her work in her lap, thinking about how late it was; how hungry the doctor would be, and how cross it would make him, for he always grew irritable when kept waiting for his meals.

Then she began to think about going and making the tea, and about the chicken, which would be done to death, and the doctor did not like chickens dry.

Just then there was a diversion.

Eliza came to the door.

"If you please 'm, cook says shall she send up the chicken? It's half-past six."

Aunt Hannah looked at the doctor, and the doctor looked at his watch.

"Wait a minute," he said; and then: "No, I'll give him another quarter of an hour."

"What a tantrum Martha will be in," muttered Eliza, as she left the room.

"Oh, that poor chicken!" thought Aunt Hannah, and then aloud:--

"I hope Vane has not met with any accident."

"Pshaw! What accident could he meet with in walking to the village with a bottle of liniment and back, unless--"

"Yes?" cried Aunt Hannah, excitedly; "unless what, my dear?"

"He has opened the bottle and sat down by the roadside to drink it all."

"Oh, my dear, surely you don't think that Vane would be so foolish."

"I don't know," cried the doctor, "perhaps so. He is always experimentalising over something."

"But," cried Aunt Hannah, with a horrified look, "it was liniment for outward application only!"

"Exactly: that's what I mean," said the doctor. "He has not been content without trying the experiment of how it would act rubbed on inside instead of out."

"Then that poor boy may be lying somewhere by the roadside in the agonies of death--poisoned," cried Aunt Hannah in horror; but the doctor burst out into a roar of laughter.

"Oh, it's too bad, my dear," cried Aunt Hannah, tearfully. "You are laughing at me and just, too, when I am so anxious about Vane."

"I'm not: a young rascal. He has met those sweet youths from the rectory, and they are off somewhere, or else stopping there."

The doctor rose and rang the bell.

"Are you going to send up to see, my dear?"

"No, I am not," said the doctor, rather tartly. "I am going to--"

Eliza entered the room.

"We'll have tea directly, Eliza," said the doctor; and Aunt Hannah hurried into the dining-room to measure out so many caddy spoonfuls into the hot silver pot, and pour in the first portion of boiling water, but listening for the expected footstep all the time.

That meal did not go off well, for, in spite of the doctor's a.s.sumed indifference, he was also anxious about his nephew. Aunt Hannah could not touch anything, and the doctor's appet.i.te was very little better; but he set this down to the chicken being, as he said, dried to nothing, and the sausages being like horn--exaggerations, both--for, in spite of Martha's threats, she was too proud of her skill in cooking to send up anything overdone.

The open jam tart was untouched, and the opening of that pot of last year's quince marmalade proved to have been unnecessary; for, though Aunt Hannah paused again and again with her cup half-way to her lips, it was not Vane's step that she heard; and, as eight o'clock came, she could hardly keep back her tears.

All at once the doctor rose and went into the hall, followed by Aunt Hannah, who looked at him wistfully as he put on a light overcoat, and took hat and stick.

"I'll walk to the rectory," he said, "and bring him back."

Aunt Hannah laid her hand upon his arm, as he reached the door.

"Don't be angry with him, my dear," she whispered.

"Why not? Is that boy to do just as he pleases here? I'll give him a good sound thras.h.i.+ng, that's what I'll do with him."