Page:Cornelia Meigs--The windy hill.djvu/23

Rh To which Oliver replied desperately:

"Tell Jennings to make it half past three. I am going for a walk."

So he had plunged out through the gates and, once away down the dusty road, he became more and more of a rebel and finally a fugitive.

"I won't go back," he kept saying to himself. "I won't go back."

There was enough money in his pocket to take him home, and there was a train from the junction at three. He could telephone from there, very briefly, that he was going and that Hotchkiss was to send his things. He was beginning to discover some use for a butler, after all.

He trudged on, growing very hot, but feeling more and more relieved at the thought of escape. The way, however, was longer than he had imagined, and three o'clock came, with the station not yet in sight. There was another train at five, he remembered, but thought that it would be better not to spend the intervening time waiting openly on the platform. He would be missed long before then and Jennings and Janet, or perhaps even Cousin Jasper himself, would come to look for him. It would be better for him to cross the nearest meadow and spend the two hours in the woods, or he might settle the question over which he had been wondering, whether there were really fish in that sharp bend of the river.

He climbed a stone wall and dropped knee-deep into a field of hay and daisies. Toward the right,