Barty had suffered before now from Aunt Bessy, and he thought that if she made of him an offence to Miss Talbot-Lowry, he would straightway rush into the river and drown himself.  Aunt Bessy, however, potentially Rabelaisian though she might be, was perfectly aware of the fact that there is a time to speak and a time to keep silence.

“See here, Barty,” she said, “let you go on now, and tell your mother not to be waiting tea for me.  I’ll take me own time.  Tell her never fear I’ll turn up, only I like to go me own pace!” She turned to Christian.  “Go on you too, my dear; I’m well enough pleased with me own company, and I hate to be delaying you.  I’ll sit down for a while and admire the scenery.”

Thus did Aunt Bessy, as she complacently told herself, watch over the interests of her great-nephew, and though her method was crude, it indisputably achieved its object.

Christian and Barty Mangan walked on in silence that was made companionable by the gurgling whisper of the river behind its screen of hazels and alders; a whisper broken now and again by the tittering laugh of the flying water over a shallow place, like someone with a good story that he cannot quite venture to tell out loud.

Barty was saying to himself, distractedly:  “What’ll I say to her?  What’ll I talk to her about?” with each repetition winding himself, like a cocoon, deeper in webs of shyness.

Christian’s social perceptions were hypersensitive, and the cris de coeur of her suffering companion were only too audible to her spiritual ear.  At eighteen, the quality of mercy has seldom developed; the young demand mercy, they expect to receive, not to bestow it; but in this girl was something that made her different from her fellows.  It was as though a soul more tempered, more instructed, more subtle and refined, had been given to her, than is vouchsafed to the majority of the poor creatures who are sent into this difficult world with an equipment that rarely meets its demands.

This is a long-winded way of saying that Christian realised that she had to restore confidence in Larry’s young friend, and that she proceeded forthwith to do so.  She would have laughed at the thought that anyone could be afraid of her, but she felt instinctively that a soothing monologue, a sort of cradle-song, was what the occasion demanded; so she began to speak of the bluebells, the woods, the weather, saying with a sort of languid simplicity, the things that the moment suggested; “babbling,” as she subsequently assured Judith, “of green fields,” until she had so lulled and bored him, that in self-defence he produced an observation.

“D’you read, Miss Christian?” said Barty, bringing forth his mouse with an abrupt and mountainous effort.

Christian repressed the reply that she had possessed the accomplishment for some years, and asked for further information.

“Poetry,” said Barty, largely; “it’s—­it’s the only reading I care for.  I thought you might like it—­” he added, hurriedly, and was again wrapped in the cocoon.