Julia, in the meantime, did her shopping, and, having loaded herself with as much as she could carry—­more than most people could except those Continental maids and mistresses who do their own marketing, she started for home.  It was a long walk—­a long way to Halgrave and a good bit beyond that to the cottage.  She did not expect to reach the village till dusk, but she thought very probably she would find her father or Mr. Gillat there; she had suggested that one or both of them should come to meet her and help carry the parcels the rest of the way.

Johnny fell in with the suggestion; she saw him through the twilight before she reached the village.  Her father, she concluded, was still sulky at her refusal to have his company earlier and so would not come now.

“I suppose father would not come?” she said, as she and Mr. Gillat walked on after a readjustment of the burden.

“Oh, no,” Johnny answered; “it was not that; I’m sure he would have come if he had been in when I started, but he was not back then.”

“Not back?” Julia repeated.  “Why, where has he gone?”

“Well,” Johnny replied slowly, “he said he was going to get fir-cones, but I’m not sure, I didn’t see him go across the heath.  Still, I dare say he went—­he took a basket, so I think he must have gone.”

Julia apparently did not find this very conclusive evidence.  “There is not anywhere much about here where he can go,” she said; much less as if she were stating a fact than as if she were reviewing likely and unlikely places.  “There is only the one road, and that goes to Halgrave, and there is nowhere for him there.”

“No, oh, no,” Johnny said; “there really is nowhere there.”

“There is the ‘Dog and Pheasant,’” Julia went on meditatively, “but he would not get anything he cared about there.”

“No,” Mr. Gillat said decidedly; “besides he would not go there, he would not sit in a small country public house and—­er—­and—­sit there—­and so on—­he would not think of going to such a place.  It is one thing when you are out in the country for a day’s fishing or something, to have a glass of ale and a piece of bread and cheese at an inn, but the other is quite different; he wouldn’t do that—­oh, no.  To sit in a little bar and—­”

“Booze,” Julia concluded for him.  “Johnny, you are always a wonder to me; how you have contrived to live so long and yet to keep your belief in man unspotted from the world beats me.”

Johnny looked uncomfortable and a little puzzled.  “Well, but your father—­” he began.

“My father is a man,” Julia interrupted, “and I would not undertake to say a man would not do anything—­on occasions—­or a woman either, for the matter of that.  There is a beast in most men, and an archangel in lots, and a snob, and a prig, and a dormant hero, and an embryo poet.  There are great possibilities in men; you have to watch and see which is coming out top and back that, and then half the time you are wrong.  Of course, at father’s age, possibilities are getting over; one or two things have come top and stay there.”