‘That you are! I don’t believe papa has gone once to the club since you came here.’ ‘Now, if I were to own that I was vain of this, you’d rebuke me, would not you?’ ‘_Our_ love could scarcely prompt to vanity.’ ‘How shall I ever learn to be humble enough in a family of such humility?’ said Nina pettishly. Then quickly correcting herself, she said, ‘I’ll go and despatch my note, and then I’ll come back and ask your pardon for all my wilfulness, and tell you how much I thank you for all your goodness to me.’ And as she spoke she bent down and kissed Kate’s hand twice or thrice fervently. ‘Oh, dearest Nina, not this--not this!’ said Kate, trying to clasp her in her arms; but the other had slipped from her grasp, and was gone. ‘Strange girl,’ muttered Kate, looking after her. ‘I wonder shall I ever understand you, or shall we ever understand each other?’ CHAPTER VIII SHOWING HOW FRIENDS MAY DIFFER The morning broke drearily for our friends, the two pedestrians, at the ‘Blue Goat.’ A day of dull aspect and soft rain in midsummer has the added depression that it seems an anachronism. One is in a measure prepared for being weather-bound in winter. You accept imprisonment as the natural fortune of the season, or you brave the elements prepared to let them do their worst, while, if confined to house, you have that solace of snugness, that comfortable chimney-corner which somehow realises an immense amount of the joys we concentrate in the word ‘Home.’ It is in the want of this rallying-point, this little domestic altar, where all gather together in a common worship, that lies the dreary discomfort of being weather-bound in summer, and when the prison is some small village inn, noisy, disorderly, and dirty, the misery is complete. ‘Grand old pig that!’ said Lockwood, as he gazed out upon the filthy yard, where a fat old sow contemplated the weather from the threshold of her dwelling. ‘I wish she’d come out. I want to make a sketch of her,’ said the other. ‘Even one’s tobacco grows too damp to smoke in this blessed climate,’ said Lockwood, as he pitched his cigar away. ‘Heigh-ho! We ‘re too late for the train to town, I see.’ ‘You’d not go back, would you?’ ‘I should think I would! That old den in the upper castle-yard is not very cheery or very nice, but there is a chair to sit on, and a review and a newspaper to read. A tour in a country and with a climate like this is a mistake.’ ‘I suspect it is,’ said Walpole drearily. ‘There is nothing to see, no one to talk to, nowhere to stop at!’ ‘All true,’ muttered the other. ‘By the way, haven’t we some plan or project for to-day--something about an old castle or an abbey to see?’ ‘Yes, and the waiter brought me a letter. I think it was addressed to you, and I left it on my dressing-table. I had forgotten all about it. I’ll go and fetch it.’