Early in the morning after breakfast Cousin Rupert left us, giving out, as he had promised, that he was on the way to see his father at Lynn. And as he told me afterwards, he kept his horse on that road till he had passed through the village, when he turned, and skirting the river as far as Raynham ferry, crossed it there, and so rode into Yarmouth.
All that day I went about with a strange lightness in my breast, so that I could scarce keep from laughing out. And when my father admonished me, pretty roughly, for not having mended the fence of the fowl walk to his liking, I minded it no more than if it had been old Sugden the rat-catcher. Once or twice during the dinner I caught my mother looking at me with a certain apprehension, as if she observed somewhat unusual in my behaviour. I fancy she thought I might be sickening for the ague, which was very rife in those parts. My mother was a great physician, and always kept ready a store of the Jesuits’ bark – the only good thing, my father was accustomed to say, that had ever come out of Rome.
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“Stand clear, you cowards, and leave Tim Watts to fight his own corner, if he can!”
I turned round to the window at these words and beheld to my joy my cousin Rupert, who had been one of the two sitting there apart, and who had now risen, pale and very angry, with his hand on the basket of a cutlass which he wore at his belt.
