"Eh? Oh! Ah! Yes, my dear. Well, Dexter, you'll have to amuse
yourself in the garden this morning. Go and have a few hours' fishing."
"If you please, sir, I'd rather stay in here if I might, and read."
"No, no, no," said the doctor cheerily. "Fine morning. Get Peter to
dig you some worms, and I'll come and look at you presently. It's all
right, my boy. We said last night we'd draw a veil over the past, eh?
You go and have a good morning's fishing."
Dexter was at his side in a moment, had thrust his hand in the doctor's,
and then fled from the room.
"Want to show him we've full confidence in him again. Bah, no! That
boy couldn't look you in the face and tell you a lie. My dear Helen,
I'm as certain of my theory being correct as of anything in the world.
But hang that Limpney for a narrow-minded, classic-stuffed,
mathematic-bristling prig! We'll have a better."
Dexter felt a strange hesitancy; but the doctor evidently wished him to
go and fish, so he took his rod, line, and basket, and was crossing the
hall when he encountered Mrs Millett.
"It was very nice of you, my dear, and I'm sure it will do you good.
You did take it all now, didn't you?"
"Yes, every drop," said Dexter, smiling; and the old lady went away
evidently highly gratified.
Old Dan'l was busy tidying up a flower-bed as he reached the lawn, and,
to Dexter's astonishment, he nodded and gave him another of his
cast-iron smiles.
Further down the garden Peter was at work.
"Dig you up a few worms, Master Dexter? Course I will. Come round to
the back of the old frames."
A curious sensation of choking troubled Dexter for a few moments, but it
passed off, and in a short time he was furnished with a bag of red
worms, and walking down to the river he sat down and began to fish with
his mind going back to the night of his running away, and he seemed to
see it all again; the undressing, the hesitation, and the cold plunge
after his clothes, and all the rest of the miserable dreary time which
had proved so different from what he had pictured in his mind.