“Ah!  It is wrong to pet a big boy like you.  Does not he what you call tip you, Crossjay?”

“Generally half-crown pieces.  I’ve had a crown-piece.  I’ve had sovereigns.”

“And for that you do as he bids you?  And he indulges you because you . . .  Well, but though Mr. Whitford does not give you money, he gives you his time, he tries to get you into the navy.”

“He pays for me.”

“What do you say?”

“My keep.  And, as for liking him, if he were at the bottom of the water here, I’d go down after him.  I mean to learn.  We’re both of us here at six o’clock in the morning, when it’s light, and have a swim.  He taught me.  Only, I never cared for schoolbooks.”

“Are you quite certain that Mr. Whitford pays for you.”

“My father told me he did, and I must obey him.  He heard my father was poor, with a family.  He went down to see my father.  My father came here once, and Sir Willoughby wouldn’t see him.  I know Mr. Whitford does.  And Miss Dale told me he did.  My mother says she thinks he does it to make up to us for my father’s long walk in the rain and the cold he caught coming here to Patterne.”

“So you see you should not vex him, Crossjay.  He is a good friend to your father and to you.  You ought to love him.”

“I like him, and I like his face.”

“Why his face?”

“It’s not like those faces!  Miss Dale and I talk about him.  She thinks that Sir Willoughby is the best-looking man ever born.”

“Were you not speaking of Mr. Whitford?”

“Yes; old Vernon.  That’s what Sir Willoughby calls him,” young Crossjay excused himself to her look of surprise.  “Do you know what he makes me think of?—­his eyes, I mean.  He makes me think of Robinson Crusoe’s old goat in the cavern.  I like him because he’s always the same, and you’re not positive about some people.  Miss Middleton, if you look on at cricket, in comes a safe man for ten runs.  He may get more, and he never gets less; and you should hear the old farmers talk of him in the booth.  That’s just my feeling.”

Miss Middleton understood that some illustration from the cricketing-field was intended to throw light on the boy’s feeling for Mr. Whitford.  Young Crossjay was evidently warming to speak from his heart.  But the sun was low, she had to dress for the dinner-table, and she landed him with regret, as at a holiday over.  Before they parted, he offered to swim across the lake in his clothes, or dive to the bed for anything she pleased to throw, declaring solemnly that it should not be lost.

She walked back at a slow pace, and sung to herself above her darker-flowing thoughts, like the reed-warbler on the branch beside the night-stream; a simple song of a lighthearted sound, independent of the shifting black and grey of the flood underneath.

A step was at her heels.

“I see you have been petting my scapegrace.”