But, underneath this surface irritation, a nameless anxiety was buzzing like a hornet.
On he pounded at the tail end of the hunt, blowing, puffing, panting, slipping on the cobbles, stumbling across the old bridge that spanned the Dapple. Vaguely, as in delirium, he knew that windows were flung open, heads stuck out, shrill voices enquiring what was the matter, and that from mouth to mouth were bandied the words, "It's little Miss Honeysuckle running away from her papa."
But when they reached the town walls and the west gate, they had to call a sudden halt, for a funeral procession, that of a neighbouring farmer, to judge from the appearance of the mourners, was winding its way into the town, bound for the Fields of Grammary, and the pursuers had perforce to stand in respectful silence while it passed, and allow their quarry to disappear down a bend of the high road.
Master Ambrose was too impatient and too much out of breath consciously to register impressions of what was going on round him. But in the automatic unquestioning way in which at such moments the senses do their work, he saw through the windows of the hearse that a red liquid was trickling from the coffin.
This enforced delay broke the spell of blind purpose that had hitherto united the pursuers into one. They now ceased to be a pack, and broke up again into separate individuals, each with his own business to attend to.
"The little lass is too nimble-heeled for us," they said, grinning ruefully.
"Yes, she's a wild goose, that's what she is, and I fear she has led us a wild goose chase," said Master Ambrose with a short embarrassed laugh.
He was beginning to be acutely conscious of the unseemliness of the situation - he, an ex-Mayor, a Senator and judge, and, what was more, head of the ancient and honourable family of Honeysuckle, to be pounding through the streets of Lud-in-the-Mist at the tail end of a crowd of 'prentices and artisans, in pursuit of his naughty, crazy wild goose of a little daughter!
"Pity it isn't Nat instead of me!" he thought to himself. "I believe he'd rather enjoy it."
Just then, a farmer came along in his gig, and seeing the hot breathless company standing puffing and mopping their brows, he asked them if they were seeking a little lass, for, if so, he had passed her a quarter of an hour ago beyond the turnpike, running like a hare, and he'd called out to her to stop, but she would not heed him.
By this time Master Ambrose was once more in complete possession of his wits and his breath.
He noticed one of his own clerks among the late pursuers, and bade him run back to his stables and order three of his grooms to ride off instantly in pursuit of his daughter.
Then he himself, his face very stern, started off for the Academy.
It was just as well that he did not hear the remarks of his late companions as they made their way back to town; for he would have found them neither sympathetic nor respectful. The Senators were certainly not loved by the rabble. However, not having heard Moonlove's eldritch shrieks nor her wild remarks, they supposed that her father had been bullying her for some mild offence, and that, in consequence, she had taken to her heels.
"And if all these fat pigs of Senators," they said, "were set running like that a little oftener, why, then, they'd make better bacon!"
Master Ambrose had to work the knocker of the Academy door very hard before it was finally opened by Miss Primrose herself.
She looked flustered, and, as it seemed to Master Ambrose, a little dissipated, her face was so pasty and her eyelids so very red.
"Now, Miss Crabapple!" he cried in a voice of thunder, "What, by the Harvest of Souls, have you been doing to my daughter, Moonlove? And if she's been ill, why have we not been told, I should like to know? I've come here for an explanation, and I mean to get it."
Miss Primrose, mopping and mowing, and garrulously inarticulate, took the fuming gentleman into the parlour. But he could get nothing out of her further than disjointed murmurs about the need for cooling draughts, and the child's being rather headstrong, and a possible touch of the sun. It was clear that she was scared out of her wits, and, moreover, there was something she wished to conceal.
Master Ambrose, from his experience on the Bench, soon realized that this was a type of witness upon whom it was useless to waste his time; so he said sternly, "You are evidently unable to talk sense yourself, but perhaps some of your pupils possess that useful accomplishment. But I warn you if if anything happens to my daughter it is you that will be held responsible. And now, send let me see send me down Prunella Chanticleer, she's always been a sensible girl with a head on her shoulders. She'll be able to tell me what exactly is the matter with Moonlove - which is more than you seem able to do."
Miss Primrose, now almost gibbering with terror, stammered out something about "study hours," and "regularity being so desirable," and "dear Prunella's having been a little out of sorts herself recently."
But Master Ambrose repeated in a voice of thunder, "Send me Prunella Chanticleer, at once."
And standing there, stern and square, he was a rather formidable figure.
So Miss Primrose could only gibber and blink her acquiescence and promise him that "dear Prunella" should instantly be sent to him.
When she had left him, Master Ambrose paced impatiently up and down, frowning heavily, and occasionally shaking his head.
Then he stood stock-still, in deep thought. Absently, he picked up from the work-table a canvas shoe, in process of being embroidered with wools of various brilliant shades.
At first, he stared at it with unseeing eyes.
Then, the surface of his mind began to take stock of the object. Its half finished design consisted of what looked like wild strawberries, only the berries were purple instead of red.
It was certainly very well done. There was no doubt but that Miss Primrose was a most accomplished needle-woman.
"But what's the good of needlework? It doesn't teach one common sense," he muttered impatiently.
"And how like a woman!" he added with a contemptuous little snort, "Aren't red strawberries good enough for her? Trying to improve on nature with her stupid fancies and her purple strawberries!"
But he was in no mood for wasting his time and attention on a half-embroidered slipper, and tossing it impatiently away he was about to march out of the room and call loudly for Prunella Chanticleer, when the door opened and in she came.
Had a stranger wanted to see an upper class maiden of Lud-in-the-Mist, he would have found a typical specimen in Prunella Chanticleer.
She was fair, and plump, and dimpled; and, as in the case of her mother, the ruthless common sense of her ancestors of the revolution had been trivialized, though not softened, into an equally ruthless sense of humour.
Such had been Prunella Chanticleer.
But, as she now walked into the room, Master Ambrose exclaimed to himself, "Toasted cheese! How plain the girl has grown!"
But that was a mere matter of taste; some people might have thought her much prettier than she had ever been before. She was certainly less plump than she used to be, and paler. But it was the change in the expression of her eyes that was most noticeable.
Hitherto, they had been as busy and restless (and, in justice to the charms of Prunella let it be added, as golden brown) as a couple of bees in summer - darting incessantly from one small object to another, and distilling from each what it held of least essential, so that in time they would have fashioned from a thousand trivialities that inferior honey that is apt to be labeled "feminine wisdom."
But, now, these eyes were idle.
Or, rather, her memory seemed to be providing them with a vision so absorbing that nothing else could arrest their gaze.