walk. The sun was just hesitating whether to treat the time as
afternoon or evening. Eventually, it decided that it was evening,
and moderated its beams. After London, the country was deliciously
fresh and cool. Jimmy felt an unwonted content. It seemed to him
just then 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 doubtless come
straight. He could not have come straighter. On the other hand, it
would be quite in keeping with the cheap substitute which served the
Earl of Dreever 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 gave the impression of being out for a little trot on its
own account, a sort of equine constitutional.
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 ever so much,' she said, taking the reins from him.
'Dandy, you naughty old thing! I got off to pick up my crop, and he
ran away.'
Jimmy looked at her flushed, smiling face, and stood staring.
It was Molly McEachern.
CHAPTER XII
MAKING A START
Self-possession was one of Jimmy's leading characteristics, but for
the moment he found himself speechless. This girl had been occupying
his thoughts for so long that--in his mind--he had grown very
intimate with her. It was something of a shock to come suddenly out
of his dreams, and face the fact that she was in reality practically
a stranger. He felt as one might with a friend whose memory has been
wiped out. It went against the grain to have to begin again from the
beginning after all the time they had been together.
A curious constraint fell upon him.
'Why, how do you do, Mr. Pitt?' she said, holding out her hand.
Jimmy began to feel better. It was something that she remembered his
