“I told them the two o’ ye were out,” she murmured to the gooseberry bushes.  “They axed when would ye be back.  I said ye went to town on the early thrain and wouldn’t be back till night.”

Decidedly Julia’s conscience could stand alone.

“With that then,” she continued, “Miss McEvoy lands into the hall, an’ ‘O Letitia,’ says she, ‘those must be the gentleman’s fishing rods!’ and then ‘Julia!’ says she, ‘could ye give us a bit o’ lunch?’ That one’s the imp!”

“Look here!” said Robert hoarsely, and with the swiftness of panic, “I’m off!  I’ll get out over the back wall.”

At this moment Miss McEvoy put her head out of the drawing-room window and scanned the garden searchingly.  Without another word we glided through the raspberry arches like departing fairies in a pantomine.  The kindly lilac and laurestina bushes grew tall and thick at the end of the garden; the wall was high, but, as is usual with fruit-garden walls, it had a well-worn feasible corner that gave on to the lane leading to the village.  We flung ourselves over it, and landed breathless and dishevelled, but safe, in the heart of the bed of nettles that plumed the common village ash-heap.  Now that we were able, temporarily at all events, to call our souls our own, we (or rather I) took further stock of the situation.  Its horrors continued to sink in.  Driven from home without so much as a hat to lay our heads in, separated from those we loved most (the mutton chops, the painting materials, the fishing tackle), a promising expedition of unusual charm cut off, so to speak, in the flower of its youth—­these were the more immediately obvious of the calamities which we now confronted.  I preached upon them, with Cassandra eloquence, while we stood, indeterminate, among the nettles.

“And what, I ask you,” I said perorating, “what on the face of the earth are we to do now?”

“Oh, it’ll be all right, my dear girl,” said Robert easily.  Gratitude for his escape from the addresses of Miss McEvoy had apparently blinded him to the difficulties of the future.  “There’s Coolahan’s pub.  We’ll get something to eat there—­you’ll see it’ll be all right.”

“But,” I said, picking my way after him among the rusty tins and the broken crockery, “the Coolahans will think we’re mad!  We’ve no hats, and we can’t tell them about the Dohertys.”

“I don’t care what they think,” said Robert.

What Mrs. Coolahan may have thought, as we dived from the sunlight into her dark and porter-sodden shop, did not appear; what she looked was consternation.

“Luncheon!” she repeated with stupefaction, “luncheon!  The dear help us, I have no luncheon for the like o’ ye!”

“Oh, anything will do,” said Robert cheerfully.  His experiences at the London bar had not instructed him in the commissariat of his country.

“A bit of cold beef, or just some bread and cheese.”

Mrs. Coolahan’s bleared eyes rolled wildly to mine, as seeking sympathy and sanity.