"You're putting my Lady's wine in his goblet, you silly woman!" Philip interrupted. "Take yourself to your own place, look's ter! Get along, wilt tha! You an' your lambs!" CHAPTER XVII DICK GOES FOR HELP Dick had wakened at dawn, the dawn he would never have seen but for her. He dressed quickly in the silken clothes of yesterday. "They will less likely recognize me on the way if I go finely clad," he thought. He said his prayers, took his long riding-boots under his arm, slipped out of his room, paused to listen, then crept stealthily along the corridor, down the stairs, and into the hall. Here he paused again to listen, then went swiftly down a long passage near the kitchen, took the stable-key from its peg, unbarred the outer door, and trembled as the bolt squeaked faintly. Outside he pulled on his boots, sped across the grass to the stable-yard, and saddled and led out the pony. Lorry was watching him all the time from his kennel. He was too wise to bark, for Dick had impressed upon him that barking at sunrise was a vain pastime, fit only to rouse ladies from their dreams and bring them to their casements to suggest the grass was yet too damp for boys and dogs to walk through, or that the air was still too raw for delicate chests and coughs like Dick's. When the pony was saddled Dick went over and kissed Lorry's nose. "Take care of her, old fellow," he said. "And if I don't come back, oh! make her understand 'tis neither fear nor faithlessness that keeps me from her! You would if you could speak." Then he mounted, and, keeping on the grass, rode down into the lane. When Lorry realized that, in spite of Dick's kiss and his own good behaviour, he was not to be taken too, he gave a great bay of disappointment that brought Lady Dorothy to her window in time to see Dick's last look at the old house before he turned out of sight. He rode to the lane-head, and for the first time came out upon the highroad. It was all uphill, and the fat pony's progress slow. On the ridge of the hill, when they reached it, he looked down the long, straight, dusty way he knew so well, where the travellers came out of the clouds at one end and went into the trees on the other. There, a speck in the haze, miles down, lay the inn of the Seven Thorns. "Come up, Fairy," said Dick, whipping his pony to a canter, and they went down the hill bravely in a cloud of dust. The landlord was just opening his shutters at the Seven Thorns--Mr. Tomlinson, the sleek and plausible, as plausible as ever, returned in safety after his adventures. In Dick's nervous grip on the reins as they passed, the pony read a command to stop, and he stopped, to Dick's discomfort. "A fine day, young gentleman," said the landlord, bowing. "Will your honour stay and breakfast? Methinks the horse's shoe goes loose--on the off hind-foot, my lord." Dick struck in a spur. Fairy bounded forward. Without answering, Dick galloped for the woods.