XII. "Roddy, I wish you'd go and see where your father is." Roddy looked up from his sketch-book. He had filled it with pictures of cavalry on plunging chargers, trains of artillery rushing into battle, sailing ships in heavy seas. Roddy's mind was possessed by images of danger and adventure. He flourished off the last wave of battle-smoke, and shut the sketch-book with a snap. Mamma knew perfectly well where Papa was. Roddy knew. Catty and Maggie the cook knew. Everybody in the village knew. Regularly, about six o'clock in the evening, he shuffled out of the house and along the High Row to the Buck Hotel, and towards dinner-time Roddy had to go and bring him back. Everybody knew what he went for. He would have to hold Papa tight by the arm and lead him over the cobblestones. They would pass the long bench at the corner under the Kendals' wall; and Mr. Oldshaw, the banker, and Mr. Horn, the grocer, and Mr. Acroyd, the shoemaker, would be sitting there talking to Mr. Belk, who was justice of the peace. And they would see Papa. The young men squatting on the flagstones outside the "Farmer's Arms" and the "King's Head" would see him. And Papa would stiffen and draw himself up, trying to look dignified and sober. When he was very bad Mamma would cry, quietly, all through dinner-time. But she would never admit that he went to the Buck Hotel. He had just gone off nobody knew where and Roddy had got to find him. August, September and October passed. XIII. "Didn't I tell you to wait? You know them all now. You see what they're like." In Roddy's voice there was a sort of tired, bitter triumph. She knew them all now: Mrs. Waugh and Miss Frewin, and the Kendals; Mr. Spencer Rollitt, and Miss Louisa Wright who had had a disappointment; and old Mrs. Heron. They were all old. Oh, and there was Dorsy Heron, Mrs. Heron's niece. But Dorsy was old too, twenty-seven. She was no good; she couldn't talk to Roddy; she could only look at him with bright, shy eyes, like a hare. Roddy and Mary were going up the Garthdale road. At the first turn they saw Mrs. Waugh and her son coming towards them. (She had forgotten Norman Waugh.) Rodney groaned. "_He's_ here again. I say, let's go back." "We can't. They've seen us." "Everybody sees us," Roddy said. He began to walk with a queer, defiant, self-conscious jerk. Mrs. Waugh came on, buoyantly, as if the hoop of a crinoline still held her up. "Well, Mary, going for another walk?" She stopped, in a gracious mood to show off her son. When she looked at Roddy her raised eyebrows said, "Still here, doing nothing?" "Norman's going back to work on Monday," she said. The son stood aside, uninterested, impatient, staring past them, beating the road with his stick. He was thickset and square. He had the stooping head and heavy eyes of a bull. Black hair and eyebrows grew bushily from his dull-white Frewin skin.