“I see no tokens of it, sir.”

“Grand-dames will be anxious, specially over one chick.  Heigho!  Winter travelling must be hard in Germany, and posts do not come.  How now, my man!  Are you rolled up like a very Russian bear?  The poor ewes will think you are come to eat up their lambs.”

“I’ll growl at them,” said Master Philip, uttering a sound sufficient to disturb the nerves of any sheep if he were permitted to make it, and off went grandfather and grandson together, Sir Philip only pausing at the door to say—­

“My lady wants you, Anne; she is fretting over the delay.  I fear, though I tell her it bodes well.”

Anne watched for a moment the hale old gentleman briskly walking on, the merry child frolicking hither and thither round him, and the sturdy body-servant Ralph, without whom he never stirred, plodding after, while Keeper, the only dog allowed to follow to the sheepfolds, marched decorously along, proud of the distinction.  Then she went up to Lady Archfield, who could not be perfectly easy as to the precious grandchild being left to his own devices in the cold, while Sir Philip was sure to run into a discussion with the shepherd over the turnips, which were too much of a novelty to be approved by the Hampshire mind.  It was quite true that she could not watch that little adventurous spirit with the same absence of anxiety as she had felt for her own son in her younger days, and Anne had to devote herself to soothing and diverting her mind, till Dr. Woodford knocked at the door to read and converse with her.

The one o’clock dinner waited for the grandfather and grandson, and when they came at last, little Philip looked somewhat blue with cold and more subdued than usual, and his grandfather observed severely that he had been a naughty boy, running into dangerous places, sliding where he ought not, and then muttered under his breath that Sedley ought to have known better than to have let him go there.

Discipline did not permit even a darling like little Phil to speak at dinner-time; but he fidgeted, and the tears came into his eyes, and Anne hearing a little grunt behind Sir Philip’s chair, looked up, and was aware that old Ralph was mumbling what to her ears sounded like:  ‘Knew too well.’  But his master, being slightly deaf, did not hear, and went on to talk of his lambs and of how Sedley had joined them on the road, but had not come back to dinner.

Phil was certainly quieter than usual that afternoon, and sat at Anne’s feet by the fire, filling little sacks with bran to be loaded on his toy cart to go to the mill, but not chattering as usual.  She thought him tired, and hearing a sort of sigh took him on her knee, when he rested his fair little head on her shoulder, and presently said in a low voice—­

“I’ve seen him.”

“Who?  Not your father?  Oh, my child!” cried Anne, in a sudden horror.

“Oh no—­the Penny Grim thing.”