Then she started and looked round, finding before her two men who were apparently laborers of some sort, one of them having a shovel over his shoulder.

“Beg your pardon, miss, but wur that your dawg?”

“Yes,” she said eagerly.  “Could you get him?  Did you see him go by?  Do you know where he is?”

“Me and my mate saw him go by, sure enough; but as for getting him—­why the keepers’ll have shot him by this time.”

“Oh no!” cried Sheila, almost in tears, “they must not shoot him.  It was my fault.  I will pay them for all the harm he has done.  Can’t you tell me which way he will go past?”

“I don’t think, miss,” said the spokesman quite respectfully, “as you can go much furder.  If you would sit down and rest yourself, and keep an eye on this ’ere shovel, me and my mate will have a hunt arter the dawg.”

Sheila not only accepted the offer gratefully, but promised to give them all the money she had if only they would bring back the dog unharmed.  She made this offer in consequence of some talk between her husband and her father which she had overheard.  Lavender was speaking of the civility he had frequently experienced at the hands of Scotch shepherds, and of the independence with which they refused to accept any compensation even for services which cost them a good deal of time and trouble.  Perhaps it was to please Sheila’s father, but at any rate, the picture the young man drew of the venality and the cupidity of folks in the South was a desperately dark one.  Ask the name of a village, have your stick picked up for you from the pavement, get into a cab or get out of it, and directly there was a touch of the cap and an unspoken request for coppers.  Then, as the services rendered rose in importance, so did the fees—­to waiters, to coachmen, to game-keepers.  These things and many more sank into Sheila’s heart.  She heard and believed, and came down to the South with the notion that every man and woman who did you the least service expected to be paid handsomely for it.  What, therefore, could she give those two men if they brought back her deer-hound but all the money she had?

It was a hard thing to wait here in the greatest doubt and uncertainty while the afternoon was visibly waning.  She began to grow afraid.  Perhaps the men had stolen the dog, and left her with this shovel as a blind.  Her husband must have come home, and would be astonished and perplexed by her absence.  Surely, he would have the sense to dine by himself, instead of waiting for her; and she reflected with some glimpse of satisfaction that she had left everything connected with dinner properly arranged, so that he should have nothing to grumble at.

“Surely,” she said to herself as she sat there, watching the light on the grass and the trees getting more and more yellow—­“surely I am very wicked or very wretched to think of his grumbling in any case.  If he grumbles, it is because I will attend too much to the affairs of the house, and not amuse myself enough.  He is very good to me, and I have no right to think of his grumbling.  And I wish I cared to amuse myself more—­to be more of a companion to him; but it is so difficult among all those people.”