“I’ll do my best,” he said, taking off his hat with a rustic impulse to scratch his head, a process which seems to have been considered good for the brains since the world began.
“I’m a little anxious about Harry,” said Joan, “and so is mother--mother far more than me; you know she will never take things easy.”
Simon nodded his head a great many times in energetic assent; no doubt he knew--who better? had not he been sent off for the doctor a hundred times when there was not much need of the doctor, and seen the Mistress wringing her hands over what seemed to the household in general very small occasion a hundred times more? To be sure she took nothing easy. That was very well known.
“Harry,” said Joan, “walked over last night, I think, to Will’s; but it’s a long walk, and you know he’s used to towns now, not to country ways.”
To this Simon responded with his usual nod, but shook his head all the same, by way of protest against bringing up a Joscelyn in a town.
“It’s a pity? Well, it may be,” said Joan; “but it’s the fact, Simon. Now I think most likely he stopped at the ‘Red Lion,’ not to wake us up again or disturb my mother. She never sleeps but with one eye open, I believe, and hears like a hare. You heard what happened to me last night. The door blew to behind me when I was just out, looking what kind of a night it was. Ne’er a one heard in the house but mother. That’s just like her. Now Harry knows that, and he would think it would disturb her if he came back.”
Simon listened to all this with a perfectly stolid countenance; but he knew as well that his young mistress was romancing, and inventing as she went on--as well as the most fine critic could have done. He listened with his eye upon her, with a word now and then to show that his interest was fully kept up; but he saw through her, and Joan was partly aware of his scepticism.
“So we think--or I think,” said Joan, “that he may have stopped at the ‘Red Lion;’ and I want to know; but, Simon, I don’t want you to go like a lion roaring and ask, has Mr. Harry Joscelyn slept a’ night here? I want you to go warily and find out--find out, you understand?”
“Withoot askin’? ay, ay, Miss Joan, I ken what ye mean,” Simon said, with many nods of his white head.