“I don’t want to say a word against Mr. Dingle, but all the same no such dreadful thing could have happened if he’d been the right one. There’s always two sides to every trouble and there must be excuses that we don’t know about.”
“There’s always excuses for everybody that we don’t know about, Daisy. We all do things we can’t explain—good as well as bad; and if we can’t explain ourselves to ourselves, then it’s right and reasonable as we shouldn’t be too sure we can explain other people.”
They made parcels of everything that belonged to Medora, then Ned brought to them a work-box, two pictures in frames and a sewing-machine.
“These have all got to go also,” he said. “And this lot you’d better give her when you see her. It’s her trinkrums and brooches and such like.”
He gave Mrs. Trivett a little box which she put in her pocket without speaking.
Another woman joined them. She was Ned’s old aunt, who had come to him to keep his house as long as he should remain in it. She talked venomously of Medora.
Presently they carried the parcels down the lane to the foot of the hill and left them at “The Waterman’s Arms,” in a little parlour on one side of the entrance. Then Ned went home and Daisy Finch and Mrs. Trivett returned to Dene. There the girl left Lydia, and the latter, after a cup of tea with a neighbour, prepared to climb the Corkscrew Hill and return to Cornworthy.
Then it was that she found a man waiting for her and Philander Knox appeared.
“I knew your movements,” he said, “and I knew that you’d be setting out for the farm just about now, so I thought as I’d keep you company up the hill. For I always find, going up the Corkscrew, that it’s easier travelled in company.”
“You’re a kind soul and I’m very glad, if you’ve got nothing better to do. My thoughts ain’t pleasant companions to-night, Mr. Knox.”
“They should be,” he answered, “for your thoughts can’t bully you, nor yet accuse you of things left undone, or done ill, like most of us have got to suffer from them. You can face your thoughts same as you can face your deeds, with a good conscience all the time.”
“Who can? I can’t. I’m cruel vexed now. That slip of a child, Daisy Finch, have been showing me that I may have been too hard on my own daughter. And yet—how can one feel too hard? ’Tisn’t as if I didn’t know Ned Dingle. But I do. He’s took this in a very Christian spirit—so far. I’d never have thought for a moment he’d have held in so well, or been such a gentleman over it. Some people might almost think he didn’t care and didn’t feel it; but he does—with all his heart he does. He couldn’t speak when I left him just now.”