"Eh? Denis? Humph! I never thought of that," said the Doctor, passing his arm round his child, and walking with her slowly up the lawn, passing Thomas, who, as soon as the encounter was over, slipped back from where he had been watching it, and was now extracting weeds at a furious rate, chuckling to himself, and with his opinion of his master wonderfully heightened, while he thought of how he would tell them at the "Half-Moon" at night about the way in which the Doctor had taken his lordship down. "Humph!" muttered the Doctor, "how can we be friends at the Manor now? Very, my dear, have I made a mistake? No. I must bring him to his senses. This has been too much to bear." Veronica looked wonderingly at the stern, commanding face before her; but she could not help her own trouble, and the countenance of Denis Rolleston creeping in like a dissolving view, which grew plainer and plainer, and then died out again, her vision being blurred by tears. VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER FIVE. DENIS APOLOGISES. "Eh, Miss 'Ronica, but the master ought to ha' been a lord!" said old Thomas some days later, as he was nailing up some loose strands of clematis against the house; and he stopped for a moment to take a couple of garden nails from his mouth, for they hindered his speech, though he had removed a third from his lips when he began. He was up on the ladder, ten feet from the ground, and kept looking down at Veronica for instructions. "Nonsense, Thomas!" she said, rather pettishly; "and raise that long spray higher; I want it to go close up by my window." "You shall have him just where you like, miss; and I'll give him some jooce at the roots to make him run faster. Hallo! what, have I got you, my fine fellow?" he continued, as he pounced upon a great snail which was having its day sleep after a heavy night's feed, close up under the window-sill. He descended the ladder slowly with his prize, and was about to crush it under his heel on the gravel path, when Veronica interposed. "No, no!" she cried; "don't do that. It is so horrid. I hate to see things killed." "But sneels do so much mischief, miss." "Never mind; throw it out into the field." "To be sure," said the Doctor, coming along. "Do you know what Uncle Toby said, Thomas, to the fly?" "Your Uncle Toby, sir? Nay." "Everybody's Uncle Toby. He told the fly there was room enough for both of them in the world." "Mebbe, sir," said Thomas, scratching his head with the claws of his wall-hammer; "and I doan't say nowt again flies; but if Uncle Toby had grown lettershes and strorbrys he wouldn't ha' said as there was room for sneels and slugs in his garden." The Doctor laughed, and went on down his favourite path, while, after jerking the snail over the hedge, Thomas returned to the ladder.