“Those ladies?” cried Phil in amazement, for indeed they were dragged in without rhyme or reason in the middle of the woods and of their walk. “Do you mean Aunt Augusta and the girls? Oh, is that all? No, I don’t suppose so. Should you mind? They’re jolly enough you know, after all, not bad sort of girls, as girls go.” “I am glad you give so good an account of them,” said Edgar, amused in spite of himself. “Oh, not half bad sort of girls! nicer a great deal than the ones from the Green, who come up sometimes. But, I say, Myra Witherington’s an exception. She _is_ fun; you should see her do old Jones, or the Rector; how you would laugh! Once I saw her do papa. I don’t think she meant it; she just caught his very tone, and the way he turns his head, all in a moment; and then she flushed up like fire and was in such a fright lest we should notice. Nobody noticed but me.” “Your cousins, I suppose, are not so clever as that,” said Edgar, humouring the boy, and feeling himself as he did so, the meanest of household spies. “It depends upon which it is. Mary is fun, the one that’s going to be married,” said Phil, “I suppose _that_ will spoil her; and Bee is not bad. She ain’t so clever as Mary, but she’s not bad. Then there’s Gussy, is a great one for telling stories; she’s capital when it rains and one can’t get out. She’s almost as good as the lady with the funny name in the Arabian Nights.” “Does she often come here?” said Edgar with a tremble in his voice. “They say she’s going to be a nun,” said Phil; “how funny people are! I can’t fancy Cousin Gussy shut up in a convent, can you? I’d rather marry, like Mary, some great swell; though they are never any fun after they’re married,” Phil added parenthetically with profound gravity. As for Edgar he was in no humour to laugh at this precocious wisdom. He went straight on, taking the wrong way, and scarcely hearing the shouts of the boy who called him back. “This is the way to the gamekeeper’s,” cried Phil, “Mr. Earnshaw, where were you going? You look as if you had been set thinking and could not see the way.” How true it was; he had been set thinking, and he knew no more what road he was going than if he had been blindfolded. Years after, the damp greenness of the fading year, the songless season, the bare branches against the sky, would bring to Edgar’s mind the moment when he shot off blankly across the path in the wood at Tottenham’s, not knowing and not caring where he went.