'"St JULIANS.—Very desirable gentleman's country residence."''Oh, that won't do, Meg.''Why not? Sounds rather nice, I think.''Is Michael a very desirable gentleman?''Oh, I never notice those mistakes, or spelling ones, I wish I did; they're so amusing when you see them.''Can't think what they teach in girls' schools,' said Ross gloomily. 'Daddy used to groan about the bills, tons of extras too, and when it's all said and done you don't know the most elementary things.''Grammar,' I observed, 'is very difficult; some of the best people can't spell.''But geography, your geography's no better. Why, I heard some one tell you the other day that her son was in Dunkirk, and you said that she must be so thankful to have him in Scotland. I could see the woman thought you dotty, only she was too polite to say so.''But, Ross, Dunkirk is so difficult, don't you see how Scotch it sounds. It's one of those places that I try to remember by reversing it. There is a system like that. I think of shortbread and then I know it's France.''Well, your system doesn't seem to have worked that time. But now I come to think of it, Meg, you're right. There is a system, whatever is the beastly thing called? Mell-gell-Hell-man-ism, I think it is.''Ross!''What?''You're not to put bad words into my mind.''I'm not, I said a sentence.''But no sentence could possibly begin with "Hell man."''Of course it could. I could say heaps.''Yes, but not fit for my young ears.''Meg, I could say one that a Plymouth Brother wouldn't mind Aunt Amelia hearing.''I'll give you a bob if you can while I count twenty.'So my brother thought hard and said, 'Suppose.''But that doesn't begin with the right word,' I said.'I must tell you the context, child. Suppose a Plymouth Brother were arguing with an atheist.''One, two, three,' I counted.'He might with perfect propriety say.''Four, five, six.''Hell, man, isnota myth. Aunt Amelia would say he was "one of the right sort," so that's worth 3d. extra. Give me that bob, Meg.'So I gave him six pennies, six halfpennies, and a threepenny bit, and he said it wasn't a bob. He said it was a shilling, which was different, and he "couldn't be fashed with all that muck in his pockets," so we bought sweets.Then he exclaimed,—'Come on, Meg,' as if it had been I who had stopped first.'But,' I protested, 'what is the hurry, there was such a pretty girl looking at you in that shop.''Meg, will you come, there's a man staring at you.''But I don't mind the pretty girl staring at you, Ross;' but my brother said,—'One really couldn't have one's women stared at by a chap like that.''Really, Ross,' I said, 'I'm not a harem.''You're a jolly sight more trouble to look after.''Oh, have you had much experience,' I asked. And then he said I was 'abominable.'So we walked on.'No,' said my brother, reverting violently to my education, 'girls' schools are simply rotten. I could run one better than your woman did. Don't even seem to have fed you properly, judging by the size you've grown, or rather not grown. I wonder if it's too late to bring an action for insufficient nourishment considering the price paid. There's one thing you do really well though, and that's arithmetic.'So I cheered up.'I never knew anybody, no, not any single person that could add up her wants so accurately and subtract them from her husband's bank balance with such lightning speed.''I think, Ross,' I said with dignity, 'it would be better if we went back to St Julian's.'So he read out:—'"10 bed and dressing-rooms, 5 reception rooms, 6 acres of pleasure gardens, stabling and coachhouse, usual domestic offices. For sale only."'Here's another:—'"Charming country cottage for sale, 5 miles from Whittington station, combines old-world charm with every modern convenience, capable of being added to."'Oh! Meg, isn't it priceless? Let's get a taxi and go and see them. Mop up your eyes, child, I don't want to look as if I were eloping with an unwilling bride.'We got to the 'charming country cottage' first. It was miles away from anywhere. It was a bungalow—at least I suppose it was, at any rate the upper storey had disappeared. It seemed to be nearly tumbling down. There was only one large room, with a lovely old bread oven and one or two small cupboard-like apartments leading out of it. I stared at it in amazement.'Capable of being added to?''Of course,' said Ross, 'very true, indeed, about the only thing you could honestly say of it. You could build a new house around it and use the present structure for a coal-hole. Next, please. I feel St Julian's will be the one, Florrie.'This, however, proved to be a young barrack. If there were eighteen rooms, there were hundreds, I should think. The type of house that a polygamist might fancy. Damp oozed from the walls and most of the paper had peeled off and lay in little mouldering heaps on the floor. Rats scuttled in the wainscoting, and in the bathroom, which was on the ground floor, lay two or three of the largest cockroaches I have ever seen.'You see,' said Ross, pointing to them with great pride, 'how the charm works. "My wife is afraid of beetles"—you get them—beautiful specimens. You want a house not quite finished—you are sent to one tumbling down. Now, if this could be worked out to its logical conclusion you would, of course, get your ideal home. I must do it on paper and try to get a formula. Let's go back to the agents, Florrie.''Not I—never again,' I said. So we returned to Fernfold for lunch. It's so jolly now the Spiders have gone. The Poppet has a nice day nursery and Ross a better bedroom. He says he misses the lumps in his mattress dreadfully, and his bed is now so comfortable that he cannot sleep.To-night, after I was in 'my byes,' as the Gidger calls it, Ross came to say good-night. He was so quaint.'Meg, something that you said to-day has rankled horribly.''Practically everything you say every day always does with me.''No, but Meg,doI ever put bad words into your mind?''Oh, Ross,' I said, and giggled hopelessly.'But, darling, do you know any?''Why, yes, I know several: Damn's one, only daddy forbade me to say it once, and somehow I've never got into the way of it, and since the war I say Hell sometimes, not that I mean to swear, only it does seem like Hell.''The Germans seem inspired by the devil, if that's what you mean,' said Ross.'And I say "infernal" sometimes. Daddy told me I might.''I bet he didn't, Meg.''He did, I tell you, if I always thought of Devonshire when I said it.''Daddy is topping,' said my brother, as he remembered the old joke, 'well, go on.''I think that's all I know,' I replied.'Oh, he said, 'how white women are. I wish they were all I knew.''But surely, Ross, not knowing a thing doesn't make a person "white." If you know a lot and don't say them, by the grace of God, I should have thought that was being "white."'CHAPTER XIThe Gidger came in from a drive bursting with excitement and importance.'Muvver,I'vefound you a house, it's the darlingest you ever saw, very old, and the drawing-room has got a pump in it, and there's a pig, too.''In the drawing-room, Gidger?' Ross inquired; 'that sounds as if it might do. Your mother likes a pig under her bed, and so did her grandmother.''Nannie and I went all over it, muvver. One of the bedrooms has a funny little place leading out of it, the lady said she thought it was a powdering closet.''Get the telegraph forms and tell Mr Cardew Thompkins we're suited,' cried Ross, getting up in a great hurry. 'Of course it'sthehouse; you're a jewel, Gidger. We never in our wildest moments hoped for a powdering closet.''I don't know what the drainage is like,' said Nannie.'Fancy talking of drainage and a powder closet in the same century,' said Ross indignantly, 'let's have lunch at once, Meg, and catch the Longcross bus and go and see it.'We had a bit of a scrimmage to catch the bus. It starts from the other inn, called The Ramping Cat. The guide-book says 'it is a small but well-conducted hostelry on the main road to London.' It seems an unfortunate name to have chosen for a place with so high a moral tone. However, as we got half-way to it we saw the bus, looking, as Ross expressed it, 'about to weigh anchor, and we're late as usual.' So I ran on ahead to ask the man to wait for Ross, as I didn't want his arm to be joggled.The bus was a quaint affair, a kind of square sarcophagus on wheels, the door opened in two bits like a stable, and the driver informed us that 'the upper part 'ad jammed that tight he couldn't get it open no'ow.' So we crawled into the beastly thing's bowels (I quote my brother), but after we had started the upper part flew open, and nothing I could do (or Ross say) would induce it to remain shut, so at last we gave it up as a bad job and left it idly flapping in the breeze.Presently the bus stopped and the man poked his head in at the window and said,—'I'm sorry to 'ave to ask you, mum and sir, to get down, but the 'orse is going to throw a fit.'We hastily descended and found the poor beast trembling violently and looking wretched.'Does he often have them?' inquired Ross.'No,' said the man, 'only if 'e's upset about anythink—when the young lady come up in the yard and asked me to wait, I thought 'e was going to throw one, but I 'oped we'd get to Longcross before 'e did.''Goodness!' said Ross, hurrying me away, 'what a perfectly ghastly effect your face seems to have on animals, Meg; I should think we'd better walk back unless you could buy a thick veil in the village. If you come out here to live you'll have to buy a motor; that poor beast's health would soon be undermined if you used the bus constantly!'The little brown house, as the Gidger called it, turned out to be two cottages, one of which is at present occupied by the owner, who is moving shortly. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that it is really one biggish house, which, about fifty years ago was divided into two small ones, each with an acre of garden. By taking down a partition and unblocking a doorway or two, it could be restored to its original state. It stands on the slope of a hill overlooking miles of common which will soon be ablaze with gorse, and in the distance there is a low ridge of purple hills with a crown of fir trees.Most of the rooms have windows at each end, an arrangement I like, as it is delightful to follow the sun round. There is the most glorious old roof you can imagine, with beautiful curves and crooked chimneys, lovely, warm, red tiles and mossy eaves.There are eight bedrooms and an oak-panelled hall, with a fireplace big enough to sit in and a place for your elbow and your pint pot. There is only one modern fireplace in the whole house. Most of the bedrooms lead out of one another, and some of 'the domestic offices,' as Mr Cardew Thompkins would call them, are a little unusual. The larder, for instance, is in the present dining-room, and so is the back door, so that while you are at lunch your butcher might arrive. But these are details which, no doubt, could be altered. There is a powdering closet, also a pump, not actually in the drawing-room, as the Gidger said, but in the 'potato shed,' which leads immediately out of it. The potato shed has a glass roof and will make a tiny conservatory.The back of the house faces south-west and is a regular sun-trap. Both the cottages are half-timbered and pargetted, with splendid beams and diamond-leaded windows, and roses and honeysuckle everywhere, and such a garden!—all on a slope, of course, with little steps here and there to break the levels, flowers, strawberries, and vegetables all mixed up, and lots of trees, and bush fruit, and a little copse with bluebells; already the exciting green spikes are showing, and there are a few snowdrops out.It's the dream-house, and the Gidger found it!We have got through a tremendous lot of business since we first saw the cottage, and I hope Michael will think we have done all the sensible things we ought. Ross telegraphed to the lawyers and they sent down a surveyor yesterday afternoon to value it and see it wouldn't tumble down the moment we bought it. The verdict is 'that it will outlast many a modern villa.' I wanted a builder to give me an estimate for doing it up. I asked the owner, who advised me to go to Jones, who had always given her satisfaction. So to Jones I went. He is the quaintest character. His hair and his whiskers grow with such velocity that on a Friday night he is double the size he was the previous Saturday, after his weekly hair-cut. He wears old stained overalls and a battered hat, and altogether looks a most frightful ruffian, the sort of person one would prefer not to meet in a dark lane. But his eyes redeem him, they are so blue and clear. The second time I saw him he said,—'Have you any relations in the Isle of Man, mum?''No,' I said, 'why?''Oh, because my wife comes from there, and she was a Miss Ross, and when the captain come to the door yesterday, so nice and friendly like, my wife says to me afterwards, "I do see Uncle John in 'im.'" (How delightful these unexpected relationships are, and I suppose he thinks I call my brother by his surname!)The house needs very little doing up, but I should like it distempered throughout, and 'Uncle John' says that the alterations I want in 'the domestic offices' can be quite easily managed. Even now I can't describe it. I have a confused impression of beams and panelling, diamond-leaded windows with wreaths of creeper, but, ah, wait till I have filled the sweet old rooms with flowers and oak and firelight and comfy chairs and books and cushions—how Michael will love it—I am intrigued at the prospect of living in Gidger's gorgeous cottage, I shall be so disappointed if the 'black beast' won't buy it.Charlie Foxhill is home on leave and wired to-day, while I was out, to know if we could give him dinner and a bed to-night. Ross telegraphed to say 'No, but we can give you an apology for the one and a series of lumps for the other.' So dear old Charlie duly arrived—beaming. It's so nice to see all one's pals. He is as amusing as ever, and has the same quaint diffidence, and bubbles over with jokes and absurdities. We asked after his mother.'Oh, still steeped in saints,' he answered, sighing.After dinner he started holding on to the mantel-piece with both hands and bending first one knee and then the other.Ross inquired, with his beautiful natural courtesy, if he were endeavouring to qualify for entrance into the County Asylum, and then Charlie gave one of those absurd answers that veil his real meaning.'Oh, no, my dear chap, but I'm going to try my luck with Monica next week. I want to talk intelligently to her father, so I've mugged up patent manures and the lost ten tribes till I'm blue in the face, and am not perfectly clear now whether it's the fertiliser or the tribes that's got mislaid. As they have family prayers and my knees do crack so abominably, I'm trying to get them a bit looser. It might prejudice my chances if they think I ain't used to kneeling down. What.''Well, you aren't, are you?' asked my brother.'Well, no,' said Charlie, 'to be perfectly candid, I'm not—I get too much of it at home.''Which is the particular pill you never can swallow?' asked Ross.'Virgin birth,' said Charlie. 'I think He was quite a good man, but I'm not prepared to say He was divine.''Are you prepared to say He was a humbug and the bastard son of Mary, then?' demanded Ross.'No, not that either, quite,' said Charlie.'Well, He must be one or the other, for there's nothing in between,' remarked my brother. 'Here, chuck over the cigarettes,' and the conversation changed rather hurriedly to Germans.This morning when Charlie saw the Gidger he swore that Monica wasnothis fate. (I wonder if Michael would think him a suitable person on whom to bestow his daughter's hand in marriage as Charlie wants to wait for her.)But before he went to the station, and I was alone with him for a little while, he let me see his soul for just a moment.I had wished him luck with Monica in the flippant way one does, when he said,—'Meg, I'll almost believe in Him if I get her. I shan't care how soon I stop a bullet if I don't.''Oh, Charlie,' I exclaimed, holding out my hands to him, 'don't be diffident with her. You know Monica likes her mind made up for her. She always used to let you do it.''No, Meg,' he said, 'not about this. She must come to me willingly or not at all.'But I am frightened for them. I know Monica's irresolution. He will be diffident and seem almost indifferent because he wants her so desperately, and she will be 'difficult' and will forget that it's just his way. She won't know her own mind till afterwards. Sometimes in these war days there is no 'afterwards.'When we got back from the station Ross presented me with four threepenny bits.'The charge for the delivery of each package from the station,' he said, 'is threepence.''How interesting,' I replied, pocketing the money, 'but I'm not expecting any parcels.''Oh, yes, you are, Meg, last night I wrote to four of our relatives and told them you were taking a house—an old one—and that contributions of seventeenth century furniture would be gratefully received.''Ross, how could you?' I gasped.'Oh, it was quite simple,' he said; 'I just wrote what I wanted to say on a piece of paper, folded it carefully and put it into an envelope, and stamped and posted it. Of course, it needs brain; I don't suppose you could do it, Meg.''Well, if you've really written——''Do you doubt my word?' said Ross indignantly.'You're a horribly ill-mannered, mercenary, money-grubbing, badly-behaved wretch, Ross; Nannie always said you should never ask for things you wanted.''I asked for thingsyouwanted,' said Ross, with the air of a martyr. This was so unanswerable that I changed the conversation hurriedly, and, although I feel that his behaviour is most reprehensible, and I don't know that he's written at all, at the same time it would be exciting if any parcels did arrive.And now I shall have to begin to think about furniture, if Michael decides to buy the cottage. It will be difficult to choose without him. I wish I had some of the old family things and bits of oak mother and daddy used to have, but everything was sold when he went out to be a missionary. There was a chest that used to stand in the hall at home. It had a lovely carved border, and there was a corner cupboard, too, that I specially loved because one side of it was longer than the other. And the 'chair of the nine devils.'HowI would like that. It had eight little devils carved on it and the ninth was the person who sat in it!CHAPTER XIII am afraid Ross has been doing too much. He has had a dreadful lot of pain since Charlie left. On Sunday I took the law into my own hands and sent for the doctor. I 'got rowed' by my brother for doing it, and by his doctor for not doing it before. I think that life is very hard on women.'No, he needn't stay in bed,' the doctor said, 'but something must be done about the nights. He has simplygotto get some natural sleep.'So I informed the invalid that I was going to sit up with him, make tea, and read aloud, and perhaps the night would seem a little less long, and he'd get a nice sleep before the morning.But my brother is not one of those people whose submissive patience is always apparent to the naked eye, and all he said was, quite politely, butquitefirmly,—'You're going to do nothing of the kind.''I quite definitelyam,' I said.So then there was a little gust of temper.'Oh,dostop fussing, Meg. You and Sam really are the limit. Anybody would think that I was "going to leave this mortal world of sin, and hatch myself a Cherubim," the way you both go on! When you hear me begin to chip the shell you can both sit up, but not before.'So then the feathers underneath my skin got ruffled, and I said that he was simply hateful and delighted to worry people who only wanted to be kind to him.And then he turned into a glacier, so I tried thawing it.'Please, Ross.''No, darling.''But if you had something to do in the night it wouldn't seem so long.''I have got something to do, Meg.''What?''Swear,' said my brother laconically.'Oh, you poor old thing,' I exclaimed.And then he added, rather hesitatingly, 'Or else try to stick it out and be courteous to Him about it.'My eyes filled up suddenly with tears. My brother evidently had still that 'picture of Him in his head,' and of course one ought always to be courteous to a person with a crown on, though I've not been decently civil myself lately.Then Ross, feeling, perhaps, that he had inadvertently been betrayed into 'talking religion' (though he apparently didn't mind trying to 'live it') said irrelevantly, 'I wonder how Charlie has got on?''I am longing to know what she said to him, Ross.''Let's hope she kissed him "good-night, darling," which is what you're going to do to me now,' said my brother, whose face whitened suddenly as the pain seized him again.At that moment Sam came in dragging a basket chair.'I don't intend to argue it out again with you, Brown,' said his master coldly.'Nor I with you,' said Brown.The two men looked at one another, and I could almost hear the clashing of their wills.'I don't feel up to it to-night, Sam.''I don't either, Master Ross.''Is your knee bad?''Putrid. I shan't sleep, anyway.''Are you telling me the truth, Brown?''I'm not in the habit of lying to you, sir.''Sorry,' said Ross, 'of course you aren't. You can stay if you have your bed wheeled in.''Thanks,' said the other briefly.So I left them, and when I returned later with hot milk and biscuits, they were both smoking, each man in his bed, prepared to help the other 'stick it out.' I wondered as I made up the fire and filled their 'baccy pouches for them whether they would swear, or be courteous, during the long hours, and prayed that they might both get some sleep before the morning.In the night I woke at four o'clock, so I went in to see the invalids. But the dear things were both asleep. He had been 'compassionate' to them instead!Now, when I wake up at four o'clock there always is a row before the day is out, and to-day was no exception to the rule.There were three letters by the first post. One from Michael saying that he would buy the cottage, one from Charlie explaining rather bitterly that he supposed he hadn't enough grandfathers, or that the cement was too hard for her to swallow, but anyway Monica had refused him; and one from the lady in question to the effect that 'Charlie didn't seem to mind much.'I lost my temper then. What a fool Monica is! As usual, I didn't stop to think, but rushed straight up to London and told her so. I interviewed her in the boot cupboard at the hospital.'You're a fool, Monica,' I said; 'you can't, even at your age, see farther than your nose. You've been so wrapped up all your life in family trees that you've never even seen the flower of Charlie's love.' (I got muddled up with Mr Williams's song. I felt somehow that Monica ought to be willing to lay snow-white flowers against Charlie's hair, and that she wasn't.) 'You've looked up so many pedigrees that you've never noticed his devotion all these years. What's cement when he's got everything else that matters. You've mistaken everything about him.Not mind? Why, he worships the ground you walk on, and I suppose presently you'll be sorry and think youdolike him after all. You never could make up your mind in time. Never could decide whether you wanted your new dress to be pink or blue, and when your mother spoilt you and gave you both you wished you had chosen shot, and when she gave you that, too, you wished it had been mauve.' (I was too angry and agitated to notice that a dress shot pink and bluewouldhave been mauve.) 'I'm absolutely sick of you. You've played with Charlie. You've let him care for you all these years and never let him speak, and when he does you refuse him. I'm tired of you,' I said. 'I'm done with you. You're too'—(I hesitated here and cast my mind round wildly for a word. I seemed to see my whole vocabulary, printed in columns like a spelling book, down which I ran a mental finger, rejecting them all until I came to 'patrician,' so I said)—'You're too patrician for me,' and I flung out of the boot cupboard.Having quarrelled with my best friend and made her 'quick all bluggy,' I bolted into a post office and sent a frantic wire to 'Uncle John' to meet me at five o'clock at the cottage to talk about repairs. After that I did a heap of shopping, whirled into a registry office and put my name down for a cook, and was rude to the lady who ran the office because she seemed to imagine I must be dotty to think she could get me one at all, though she took my booking fee all right. Then I got in a panic and wondered whether I really did like the cottage now that it was finally decided, so I rushed home and routed Ross out to walk over to it and help me to make up my mind—like Monica.The winter sun was setting as we walked up the red brick path, mellowing and beautifying the old place and filling the rooms with soft rose light. I felt quite sure I liked it.'Uncle John' turned up at five o'clock as requested.'Now,' said I, walking into what will be the drawing-room, 'what would you suggest here, Jones?''Well, mum,' said he, pulling his beard (it was one of his bushy days), 'I should think a nice yaller satin paper with a cream stripe would do 'ere, and a modern grate with a tiled hearth, that could be yaller to match the paper, or if you think that too conspishus you could 'ave it cream to match the stripe. I done one for a lady last week, and it looks a fair treat, that it do.'I murmured weakly that I was sure it did, and did not venture to meet my brother's eye. Then we passed into the lovely old dining-room, with its oak panelling and beamed ceiling.'Now 'ere,' said 'Uncle John,' warming to the job, 'you won't 'ave to go to no expense in fillin' up the fireplace; I dun that last year, but I should 'ave a nice gas fire, it saves a deal of work.' But the room he considered needed brightening up. 'A nice red paper, now, and this 'ere old panelling painted white.''By Jove,' said the incorrigible Ross, looking at me with a malicious grin, 'it would make the room lighter if you painted all the oak white, Meg, and you could have a green plush carpet and a red table cloth with ball fringe.''Uncle John' looked at him approvingly.'Killing 'Uns ain't spoilt the young genelman's taste, I can see that,' he said, 'but I shouldn't 'ave nothing green, it is too conspishus, the two colours; keep it all red, that's what I say, mum. Walls, carpets, and curtings all to match; what you want to aim at, Mrs Ellsley, is a scheme o' colour, art in the 'ome is what you want; I done up a house for a lady like that, last week, dining-room red, drawing-room yaller, 'all green, bedrooms pink and blue, everythink to match and no expense spared, quite the palace, mum. Why, I could brighten up this old place so as you wouldn't know it.'Am I lacking in moral courage? Could you have damped his ardour by word of mouth? He was so interested and friendly, so anxious to give the best advice. How could I tell him I wanted nothing but soft cream wash on the walls? and the only awful modern grate, that desecrated the whole house, pulled out? I didn't even want a geyser, his idea of the acme of comfort, ''ot bath of a Saturday night and no trouble.' So I weakly said I would go home and think it over and would write and tell him what I had decided. Ross vanished into the village drapers on the way home and came out waving a pattern of ball fringe.''Ere yer are,' he giggled, 'best quality seven three, what 'o for art in the 'ome.'A radiant Gidger met us at the door.'The first parcel's come, muvver. Oh, Uncle Woss, do cut the string.''String,' said Ross, proceeding to try to untie every knot with his left hand, 'string is a very valuable thing, Gidg., and must on no account be wasted. Your cottage is only held up by the wallpaper, which your mother insists on having stripped off, so I expect we shall have to tie it up outside like a parcel.''Oh, what a lubberly supwise, muvver.' And, indeed, it was. Aunt Constance had sent us six pairs of realoldchintz curtains, enough for all my small windows, I should think. Such lovely soft colours: anemones and leaves on a cream ground, and a border that will make miles and miles of little frills for the top! I am now going to compose a suitable letter to 'Uncle John' about the wallpapers.Oh, I nearly forgot to say that I have managed to get a cook after all, for 'Uncle John' brought his eldest daughter along with him and suggested I should try her, and as she had an excellent written reference from her last employer, who is now nursing in France, I engaged her on the spot, and Nannie says it's another modern miracle and no other woman ever had my luck!Then I am keeping on the old man, Tidmarsh, nicknamed the Titmouse, who has always come in for two days a week and done the garden. He can give me full time and knows of a garden boy who will also do the boots and knives and all the other jobs that modern servants won't do. The boy's name isTench. Of course, Ross christened him 'the Stench' at once. The registry office at Tarnley sent a girl up this evening as parlourmaid. She amused me very much by saying, 'I don't consider myself an ordinary servant, I am very superior, and so is my family. I never go out, except to very special places, my mistresses have always been real ladies, they didn't know how to do anything.'I am afraid I cannot aspire to that standard of gentility, but have engaged her and hope I shan't regret it.Then the charlady of these rooms said,—'My 'Ilda wants a place, would she do as 'ousemaid though she is a bit rough and young like?'She came up to see me, and she proved to be a cheery soul, and perhaps the corners will rub off. I hope the superior parlourmaid won't be too superior to take on the job of training her. In any case there does not seem to be another housemaid in the world, so my choice is somewhat limited.The staff, therefore, consists of the Titmouse, and the Stench for outside, and the Superior Person (commonly called the S.P.), the cook, who rejoices in the name of Dulcie, and 'my 'Ilda' for the house. Nannie insists she can manage for me and all the nursery part, if 'my 'Ilda' does the scrubbing.It has turned very cold again after the thaw, and the frost made everything exceedingly slippery, the roads are like glass.At dinner I said to Ross,—'Aren't the paths slippery? Positively I could hardly get home this afternoon; I took one step forward and slid back two.''Do think, my dear,' said Ross, 'do try to use your brains, if you have any. If you had really taken one forward and two back you'd have found yourself back at the station.''I did, so took a taxi home, didn't you hear me drive up?''Humph,' said Ross. (I don't often get one in, do I?)I am going to keep chickens and rabbits, as the meat question is difficult, and cockerels and young bunnies will help to feed the family. I suggested a goat, but Ross is dead off that. He thinks the Stenchanda goat will be too much for the S.P. and Dulcie.I intend the Gidger to know all about animals and flowers and how they breed and propagate. Nature is beautiful and ignorance unlovely. So I shall not tell my little girl lies or half truths about sex, but shall unfold the facts of life gradually as she is able to bear them, so that her heart and mind may become as beautiful as her face promises to be.Then some day she may go to her husband, not in that awful state of ignorance, fright, and misery that some call 'innocence,' but with a wide, sweet, sane knowledge of the beautiful mysteries of life.CHAPTER XIIIRoss seems better. He is sleeping some hours each night without the bromide. I never heard how much of that Brown got him to take.When I inquired how the knee was, Sam said,—'Keeps pretty level with the arm, miss—ma'am, I should say.'Now what does he mean by that?There has been another thaw and everything is distinctly mucky, but yesterday, after lunch, I put on my shortest skirt and my oldest hat, the one with the pheasant wing in it that Michael likes, and we tramped over the dripping meadows to call on 'Uncle John.' 'Aunt John' opened the door. She was resplendent in black silk with a necklace of melon seeds and a pair of the most enormous pearl ear-rings, that even Cleopatra might have envied.She invited us into the little front parlour. This room was almost entirely filled with a full-sized grand piano, which 'Uncle John' had bought at a sale cheap, owing to the fact that most of the notes were missing, 'But then,' as he explained, 'look at the case, real Hebony.'He came in a few minutes after, looking a perfect ragamuffin in his stained overalls and battered hat, not at all a suitable mate for the resplendent vision in silk and melon seeds. The pair rather reminded me of Uncle Jasper and Aunt Constance—she dressed for dinner in all her finery and jewels and he just come in from grubbing out a foundation of a buried abbey. And 'Aunt John' looked at 'Uncle John' in much the same way that Aunt Constance looks at Uncle Jasper under the same circumstances.'Fair caught, I am,' he exclaimed affably, shaking hands all round; 'ain't had it off yet, then?' he said to Ross by way of cheering up an invalid. And then with great pride he added, reverting to his first paragraph, 'but the missis fair makes up for it, don't she, always dressed up like a 'am bone of an afternoon is Sarah.''Well, mum,' he said, turning to me, 'I got your letter, and it's a fair blow, that it is; I don't say but what wall-papers ain't expensive and likely to go up, but if you could 'ave afforded the yaller with the cream stripe I think it would 'ave fair made the place. Perhaps if you wrote and told yer 'usband 'ow much better I say it would look 'e might be willing to do a bust for once, especially as you don't seem to cost 'im much in clothes,' and he glanced at my plain tweed skirt.Here Ross tittered, as I happened to have mentioned at lunch the price I had paid for the garment in question.''Owever, it ain't for me to say,' said 'Uncle John,' 'owe no man nothing is my motter and always 'as been, and it ain't always that I could give the wife a silk dress for the afternoon, is it, Sarah?'Sarah, with ready tact, changed the conversation by offering us tea, and observed that John was always 'a bit free with his tongue.''Oh, no offence intended, I'm sure,' said 'Uncle John,' but the dear soul has it firmly fixed in his mind that we are rather poor, and he keeps assuring me that he will keep expenses down as much as possible. He will begin the work on Friday, with the owner's consent, although the deeds will not be actually signed by then. I hope we shall be in 'Our House' by the middle of March.When we returned from calling on 'Uncle John' I found a letter asking me to go to Staple Inn this week to sign some deeds. But why should they want me to do that when Ross has Michael's Power of Attorney? I asked my brother if he knew, but he professed the most profound ignorance of everything in heaven and earth, except the evening paper (which was private).So I had to possess my soul in patience all night, and this morning when we got to the lawyer's office I discovered two conspiracies.Fancy! Michael has given me the cottage. Isn't it too sweet of him? I was quite overcome when the lawyer said that the deeds were to be in my name. I have never had anything of my own like that before, except £2 a year paid quarterly, that an old cousin left me.When the lawyer had congratulated me on my elevation to the position of a landed proprietor, he said, 'And now, my dear young lady, I have another piece of news which will, I think, make you an even more radiant vision than you are at the moment.''Oh, lor!' Ross whispered, 'that's another 13/4 for poor old Michael; the larger the lie, Meg, the bigger the bill!'And then the lawyer told me that all the family silver and the old furniture had been stored all these years by daddy's orders for me if I cared to have them.My brother and I were so excited that we could hardly stop to say 'good-bye' to our legal adviser, but tumbled head-first downstairs and into a taxi. Ross exhorted the Jehu to drive furiously to the Furniture Depository, where I found all my treasures, all the things that in the old days made home, that had acquired a special value from their association quite apart from their intrinsic worth. I sat in the chair of the nine devils and cried for the days when mother used the things, wept because daddy had been so thoughtful, and because I badly wanted to hear him say the old joke I loved as a kiddie, 'Oh, can't you see the ninth devil? I can!'I found in store the eight old wheel-back chairs which were used in the servants' hall at home and the two arm-chairs to match, which were always set at either end of the long table for the cook and parlourmaid. Woe betide any lesser lights that dared to sit in those seats of the mighty! Fashion changes rapidly, however, and they will be our best, oh, very best dining-room chairs, with little flat cushions added, perhaps, for comfort. Then there is mother's grandmother's gate leg table, it used to stand in the hall for cards and letters, but that will be used for us to dine at. I seem to see the flowers on it and the little pools of light made by the glass and silver and the soft reflection of the shaded candles on the oak.I shall set the chair of the nine devils beside the fire. The corner cupboard with the one side longer than the other will do for glass and salts and peppers, but as our dining-room is low, it must stand instead of hang as it used to do at home. Alas for Aunt Amelia's feelings, the cupboard door is panelled and the four divisions form a cross! Then there is a funny old Devonshire dresser made of deal, with three deep drawers, that we used in the school-room. It will do for a sideboard, and the drawers, if divided and lined with green baize, will hold the forks and spoons. It is painted black and has fascinating drop handles. There is a hard, uncompromising Elizabethan air about it that just matches the heavy beams in the ceiling. There is a splendid old brass Chinese incense burner amongst the ornaments, and somewhere in one of my multifarious boxes I have a flaming square of crimson with that glorious embroidery only Chinese people produce. It shall be made into a cushion for the black oak chair, and be the only splash of colour in the room. One or two of the pictures will look quite nice. There is a quaint print, in an old maple frame—Speech Day at Christ's Hospital—rows of stately dames mixed up with Mayors and Aldermen and maces sit round the hall, listening to one of the pupils reciting an ode. The pride and agony on the headmaster's face near by is funny. 'Will he remember it all? Such a credit to the school.' This at home used to be in an attic, but I loved it because, the glass being cracked, it made the Mayor appear to squint. Evidently daddy remembered this, for he had written on the back on a bit of stamp paper, 'For Meg,' that was what started the tears.There are a few silhouettes in black frames with acorns on the top. One is of Grandpa Fotheringham as a baby, and his mother has written the date at the back and added, 'Very like my little boy, so dear to me.' There is a painting, black with age, of one of my mother's family. She is a severe-looking old lady, with rather a low-necked bodice (too low for a Bishop's relative), but I forgot she was on the distaff side. She has huge, full, puff sleeves and her head is entirely covered with a large muslin cap with a goffered frill all round her face, tied under her chin. That must hang near the silhouettes, I think. I found in a box a funny old sampler framed in an ancient black and gilt frame. It is a picture, beautifully sewn in faded silks, of a little girl and a lamb sitting under a tree in a meadow, which looks damp, and her home is in the distance at the back. She, too, is in a low-necked gown, with short sleeves, and she wears a muslin erection on her head. She is loving the lamb, which is extremely woolly. He is made entirely of French knots, so if you know what those are you will know how very woolly that lamb is. There is a pair of small shoes peeping out from under the little girl's gown, they are red. Somehow I feel that they are her best ones, and I don't believe her mother knows she's got them on. They look most unsuitable for a damp meadow, and the lamb will step on them in a minute, and then there'll be trouble. She'll probably cry.When I got home I found a batch of letters and a picture from Uncle Jasper. It is a copy of one in the cathedral library at Canterbury. I will copy out a bit of his letter, which is so typical of the darling pet:—
'"St JULIANS.—Very desirable gentleman's country residence."'
'Oh, that won't do, Meg.'
'Why not? Sounds rather nice, I think.'
'Is Michael a very desirable gentleman?'
'Oh, I never notice those mistakes, or spelling ones, I wish I did; they're so amusing when you see them.'
'Can't think what they teach in girls' schools,' said Ross gloomily. 'Daddy used to groan about the bills, tons of extras too, and when it's all said and done you don't know the most elementary things.'
'Grammar,' I observed, 'is very difficult; some of the best people can't spell.'
'But geography, your geography's no better. Why, I heard some one tell you the other day that her son was in Dunkirk, and you said that she must be so thankful to have him in Scotland. I could see the woman thought you dotty, only she was too polite to say so.'
'But, Ross, Dunkirk is so difficult, don't you see how Scotch it sounds. It's one of those places that I try to remember by reversing it. There is a system like that. I think of shortbread and then I know it's France.'
'Well, your system doesn't seem to have worked that time. But now I come to think of it, Meg, you're right. There is a system, whatever is the beastly thing called? Mell-gell-Hell-man-ism, I think it is.'
'Ross!'
'What?'
'You're not to put bad words into my mind.'
'I'm not, I said a sentence.'
'But no sentence could possibly begin with "Hell man."'
'Of course it could. I could say heaps.'
'Yes, but not fit for my young ears.'
'Meg, I could say one that a Plymouth Brother wouldn't mind Aunt Amelia hearing.'
'I'll give you a bob if you can while I count twenty.'
So my brother thought hard and said, 'Suppose.'
'But that doesn't begin with the right word,' I said.
'I must tell you the context, child. Suppose a Plymouth Brother were arguing with an atheist.'
'One, two, three,' I counted.
'He might with perfect propriety say.'
'Four, five, six.'
'Hell, man, isnota myth. Aunt Amelia would say he was "one of the right sort," so that's worth 3d. extra. Give me that bob, Meg.'
So I gave him six pennies, six halfpennies, and a threepenny bit, and he said it wasn't a bob. He said it was a shilling, which was different, and he "couldn't be fashed with all that muck in his pockets," so we bought sweets.
Then he exclaimed,—
'Come on, Meg,' as if it had been I who had stopped first.
'But,' I protested, 'what is the hurry, there was such a pretty girl looking at you in that shop.'
'Meg, will you come, there's a man staring at you.'
'But I don't mind the pretty girl staring at you, Ross;' but my brother said,—
'One really couldn't have one's women stared at by a chap like that.'
'Really, Ross,' I said, 'I'm not a harem.'
'You're a jolly sight more trouble to look after.'
'Oh, have you had much experience,' I asked. And then he said I was 'abominable.'
So we walked on.
'No,' said my brother, reverting violently to my education, 'girls' schools are simply rotten. I could run one better than your woman did. Don't even seem to have fed you properly, judging by the size you've grown, or rather not grown. I wonder if it's too late to bring an action for insufficient nourishment considering the price paid. There's one thing you do really well though, and that's arithmetic.'
So I cheered up.
'I never knew anybody, no, not any single person that could add up her wants so accurately and subtract them from her husband's bank balance with such lightning speed.'
'I think, Ross,' I said with dignity, 'it would be better if we went back to St Julian's.'
So he read out:—
'"10 bed and dressing-rooms, 5 reception rooms, 6 acres of pleasure gardens, stabling and coachhouse, usual domestic offices. For sale only."
'Here's another:—
'"Charming country cottage for sale, 5 miles from Whittington station, combines old-world charm with every modern convenience, capable of being added to."
'Oh! Meg, isn't it priceless? Let's get a taxi and go and see them. Mop up your eyes, child, I don't want to look as if I were eloping with an unwilling bride.'
We got to the 'charming country cottage' first. It was miles away from anywhere. It was a bungalow—at least I suppose it was, at any rate the upper storey had disappeared. It seemed to be nearly tumbling down. There was only one large room, with a lovely old bread oven and one or two small cupboard-like apartments leading out of it. I stared at it in amazement.
'Capable of being added to?'
'Of course,' said Ross, 'very true, indeed, about the only thing you could honestly say of it. You could build a new house around it and use the present structure for a coal-hole. Next, please. I feel St Julian's will be the one, Florrie.'
This, however, proved to be a young barrack. If there were eighteen rooms, there were hundreds, I should think. The type of house that a polygamist might fancy. Damp oozed from the walls and most of the paper had peeled off and lay in little mouldering heaps on the floor. Rats scuttled in the wainscoting, and in the bathroom, which was on the ground floor, lay two or three of the largest cockroaches I have ever seen.
'You see,' said Ross, pointing to them with great pride, 'how the charm works. "My wife is afraid of beetles"—you get them—beautiful specimens. You want a house not quite finished—you are sent to one tumbling down. Now, if this could be worked out to its logical conclusion you would, of course, get your ideal home. I must do it on paper and try to get a formula. Let's go back to the agents, Florrie.'
'Not I—never again,' I said. So we returned to Fernfold for lunch. It's so jolly now the Spiders have gone. The Poppet has a nice day nursery and Ross a better bedroom. He says he misses the lumps in his mattress dreadfully, and his bed is now so comfortable that he cannot sleep.
To-night, after I was in 'my byes,' as the Gidger calls it, Ross came to say good-night. He was so quaint.
'Meg, something that you said to-day has rankled horribly.'
'Practically everything you say every day always does with me.'
'No, but Meg,doI ever put bad words into your mind?'
'Oh, Ross,' I said, and giggled hopelessly.
'But, darling, do you know any?'
'Why, yes, I know several: Damn's one, only daddy forbade me to say it once, and somehow I've never got into the way of it, and since the war I say Hell sometimes, not that I mean to swear, only it does seem like Hell.'
'The Germans seem inspired by the devil, if that's what you mean,' said Ross.
'And I say "infernal" sometimes. Daddy told me I might.'
'I bet he didn't, Meg.'
'He did, I tell you, if I always thought of Devonshire when I said it.'
'Daddy is topping,' said my brother, as he remembered the old joke, 'well, go on.'
'I think that's all I know,' I replied.
'Oh, he said, 'how white women are. I wish they were all I knew.'
'But surely, Ross, not knowing a thing doesn't make a person "white." If you know a lot and don't say them, by the grace of God, I should have thought that was being "white."'
CHAPTER XI
The Gidger came in from a drive bursting with excitement and importance.
'Muvver,I'vefound you a house, it's the darlingest you ever saw, very old, and the drawing-room has got a pump in it, and there's a pig, too.'
'In the drawing-room, Gidger?' Ross inquired; 'that sounds as if it might do. Your mother likes a pig under her bed, and so did her grandmother.'
'Nannie and I went all over it, muvver. One of the bedrooms has a funny little place leading out of it, the lady said she thought it was a powdering closet.'
'Get the telegraph forms and tell Mr Cardew Thompkins we're suited,' cried Ross, getting up in a great hurry. 'Of course it'sthehouse; you're a jewel, Gidger. We never in our wildest moments hoped for a powdering closet.'
'I don't know what the drainage is like,' said Nannie.
'Fancy talking of drainage and a powder closet in the same century,' said Ross indignantly, 'let's have lunch at once, Meg, and catch the Longcross bus and go and see it.'
We had a bit of a scrimmage to catch the bus. It starts from the other inn, called The Ramping Cat. The guide-book says 'it is a small but well-conducted hostelry on the main road to London.' It seems an unfortunate name to have chosen for a place with so high a moral tone. However, as we got half-way to it we saw the bus, looking, as Ross expressed it, 'about to weigh anchor, and we're late as usual.' So I ran on ahead to ask the man to wait for Ross, as I didn't want his arm to be joggled.
The bus was a quaint affair, a kind of square sarcophagus on wheels, the door opened in two bits like a stable, and the driver informed us that 'the upper part 'ad jammed that tight he couldn't get it open no'ow.' So we crawled into the beastly thing's bowels (I quote my brother), but after we had started the upper part flew open, and nothing I could do (or Ross say) would induce it to remain shut, so at last we gave it up as a bad job and left it idly flapping in the breeze.
Presently the bus stopped and the man poked his head in at the window and said,—
'I'm sorry to 'ave to ask you, mum and sir, to get down, but the 'orse is going to throw a fit.'
We hastily descended and found the poor beast trembling violently and looking wretched.
'Does he often have them?' inquired Ross.
'No,' said the man, 'only if 'e's upset about anythink—when the young lady come up in the yard and asked me to wait, I thought 'e was going to throw one, but I 'oped we'd get to Longcross before 'e did.'
'Goodness!' said Ross, hurrying me away, 'what a perfectly ghastly effect your face seems to have on animals, Meg; I should think we'd better walk back unless you could buy a thick veil in the village. If you come out here to live you'll have to buy a motor; that poor beast's health would soon be undermined if you used the bus constantly!'
The little brown house, as the Gidger called it, turned out to be two cottages, one of which is at present occupied by the owner, who is moving shortly. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that it is really one biggish house, which, about fifty years ago was divided into two small ones, each with an acre of garden. By taking down a partition and unblocking a doorway or two, it could be restored to its original state. It stands on the slope of a hill overlooking miles of common which will soon be ablaze with gorse, and in the distance there is a low ridge of purple hills with a crown of fir trees.
Most of the rooms have windows at each end, an arrangement I like, as it is delightful to follow the sun round. There is the most glorious old roof you can imagine, with beautiful curves and crooked chimneys, lovely, warm, red tiles and mossy eaves.
There are eight bedrooms and an oak-panelled hall, with a fireplace big enough to sit in and a place for your elbow and your pint pot. There is only one modern fireplace in the whole house. Most of the bedrooms lead out of one another, and some of 'the domestic offices,' as Mr Cardew Thompkins would call them, are a little unusual. The larder, for instance, is in the present dining-room, and so is the back door, so that while you are at lunch your butcher might arrive. But these are details which, no doubt, could be altered. There is a powdering closet, also a pump, not actually in the drawing-room, as the Gidger said, but in the 'potato shed,' which leads immediately out of it. The potato shed has a glass roof and will make a tiny conservatory.
The back of the house faces south-west and is a regular sun-trap. Both the cottages are half-timbered and pargetted, with splendid beams and diamond-leaded windows, and roses and honeysuckle everywhere, and such a garden!—all on a slope, of course, with little steps here and there to break the levels, flowers, strawberries, and vegetables all mixed up, and lots of trees, and bush fruit, and a little copse with bluebells; already the exciting green spikes are showing, and there are a few snowdrops out.
It's the dream-house, and the Gidger found it!
We have got through a tremendous lot of business since we first saw the cottage, and I hope Michael will think we have done all the sensible things we ought. Ross telegraphed to the lawyers and they sent down a surveyor yesterday afternoon to value it and see it wouldn't tumble down the moment we bought it. The verdict is 'that it will outlast many a modern villa.' I wanted a builder to give me an estimate for doing it up. I asked the owner, who advised me to go to Jones, who had always given her satisfaction. So to Jones I went. He is the quaintest character. His hair and his whiskers grow with such velocity that on a Friday night he is double the size he was the previous Saturday, after his weekly hair-cut. He wears old stained overalls and a battered hat, and altogether looks a most frightful ruffian, the sort of person one would prefer not to meet in a dark lane. But his eyes redeem him, they are so blue and clear. The second time I saw him he said,—
'Have you any relations in the Isle of Man, mum?'
'No,' I said, 'why?'
'Oh, because my wife comes from there, and she was a Miss Ross, and when the captain come to the door yesterday, so nice and friendly like, my wife says to me afterwards, "I do see Uncle John in 'im.'" (How delightful these unexpected relationships are, and I suppose he thinks I call my brother by his surname!)
The house needs very little doing up, but I should like it distempered throughout, and 'Uncle John' says that the alterations I want in 'the domestic offices' can be quite easily managed. Even now I can't describe it. I have a confused impression of beams and panelling, diamond-leaded windows with wreaths of creeper, but, ah, wait till I have filled the sweet old rooms with flowers and oak and firelight and comfy chairs and books and cushions—how Michael will love it—I am intrigued at the prospect of living in Gidger's gorgeous cottage, I shall be so disappointed if the 'black beast' won't buy it.
Charlie Foxhill is home on leave and wired to-day, while I was out, to know if we could give him dinner and a bed to-night. Ross telegraphed to say 'No, but we can give you an apology for the one and a series of lumps for the other.' So dear old Charlie duly arrived—beaming. It's so nice to see all one's pals. He is as amusing as ever, and has the same quaint diffidence, and bubbles over with jokes and absurdities. We asked after his mother.
'Oh, still steeped in saints,' he answered, sighing.
After dinner he started holding on to the mantel-piece with both hands and bending first one knee and then the other.
Ross inquired, with his beautiful natural courtesy, if he were endeavouring to qualify for entrance into the County Asylum, and then Charlie gave one of those absurd answers that veil his real meaning.
'Oh, no, my dear chap, but I'm going to try my luck with Monica next week. I want to talk intelligently to her father, so I've mugged up patent manures and the lost ten tribes till I'm blue in the face, and am not perfectly clear now whether it's the fertiliser or the tribes that's got mislaid. As they have family prayers and my knees do crack so abominably, I'm trying to get them a bit looser. It might prejudice my chances if they think I ain't used to kneeling down. What.'
'Well, you aren't, are you?' asked my brother.
'Well, no,' said Charlie, 'to be perfectly candid, I'm not—I get too much of it at home.'
'Which is the particular pill you never can swallow?' asked Ross.
'Virgin birth,' said Charlie. 'I think He was quite a good man, but I'm not prepared to say He was divine.'
'Are you prepared to say He was a humbug and the bastard son of Mary, then?' demanded Ross.
'No, not that either, quite,' said Charlie.
'Well, He must be one or the other, for there's nothing in between,' remarked my brother. 'Here, chuck over the cigarettes,' and the conversation changed rather hurriedly to Germans.
This morning when Charlie saw the Gidger he swore that Monica wasnothis fate. (I wonder if Michael would think him a suitable person on whom to bestow his daughter's hand in marriage as Charlie wants to wait for her.)
But before he went to the station, and I was alone with him for a little while, he let me see his soul for just a moment.
I had wished him luck with Monica in the flippant way one does, when he said,—
'Meg, I'll almost believe in Him if I get her. I shan't care how soon I stop a bullet if I don't.'
'Oh, Charlie,' I exclaimed, holding out my hands to him, 'don't be diffident with her. You know Monica likes her mind made up for her. She always used to let you do it.'
'No, Meg,' he said, 'not about this. She must come to me willingly or not at all.'
But I am frightened for them. I know Monica's irresolution. He will be diffident and seem almost indifferent because he wants her so desperately, and she will be 'difficult' and will forget that it's just his way. She won't know her own mind till afterwards. Sometimes in these war days there is no 'afterwards.'
When we got back from the station Ross presented me with four threepenny bits.
'The charge for the delivery of each package from the station,' he said, 'is threepence.'
'How interesting,' I replied, pocketing the money, 'but I'm not expecting any parcels.'
'Oh, yes, you are, Meg, last night I wrote to four of our relatives and told them you were taking a house—an old one—and that contributions of seventeenth century furniture would be gratefully received.'
'Ross, how could you?' I gasped.
'Oh, it was quite simple,' he said; 'I just wrote what I wanted to say on a piece of paper, folded it carefully and put it into an envelope, and stamped and posted it. Of course, it needs brain; I don't suppose you could do it, Meg.'
'Well, if you've really written——'
'Do you doubt my word?' said Ross indignantly.
'You're a horribly ill-mannered, mercenary, money-grubbing, badly-behaved wretch, Ross; Nannie always said you should never ask for things you wanted.'
'I asked for thingsyouwanted,' said Ross, with the air of a martyr. This was so unanswerable that I changed the conversation hurriedly, and, although I feel that his behaviour is most reprehensible, and I don't know that he's written at all, at the same time it would be exciting if any parcels did arrive.
And now I shall have to begin to think about furniture, if Michael decides to buy the cottage. It will be difficult to choose without him. I wish I had some of the old family things and bits of oak mother and daddy used to have, but everything was sold when he went out to be a missionary. There was a chest that used to stand in the hall at home. It had a lovely carved border, and there was a corner cupboard, too, that I specially loved because one side of it was longer than the other. And the 'chair of the nine devils.'HowI would like that. It had eight little devils carved on it and the ninth was the person who sat in it!
CHAPTER XII
I am afraid Ross has been doing too much. He has had a dreadful lot of pain since Charlie left. On Sunday I took the law into my own hands and sent for the doctor. I 'got rowed' by my brother for doing it, and by his doctor for not doing it before. I think that life is very hard on women.
'No, he needn't stay in bed,' the doctor said, 'but something must be done about the nights. He has simplygotto get some natural sleep.'
So I informed the invalid that I was going to sit up with him, make tea, and read aloud, and perhaps the night would seem a little less long, and he'd get a nice sleep before the morning.
But my brother is not one of those people whose submissive patience is always apparent to the naked eye, and all he said was, quite politely, butquitefirmly,—
'You're going to do nothing of the kind.'
'I quite definitelyam,' I said.
So then there was a little gust of temper.
'Oh,dostop fussing, Meg. You and Sam really are the limit. Anybody would think that I was "going to leave this mortal world of sin, and hatch myself a Cherubim," the way you both go on! When you hear me begin to chip the shell you can both sit up, but not before.'
So then the feathers underneath my skin got ruffled, and I said that he was simply hateful and delighted to worry people who only wanted to be kind to him.
And then he turned into a glacier, so I tried thawing it.
'Please, Ross.'
'No, darling.'
'But if you had something to do in the night it wouldn't seem so long.'
'I have got something to do, Meg.'
'What?'
'Swear,' said my brother laconically.
'Oh, you poor old thing,' I exclaimed.
And then he added, rather hesitatingly, 'Or else try to stick it out and be courteous to Him about it.'
My eyes filled up suddenly with tears. My brother evidently had still that 'picture of Him in his head,' and of course one ought always to be courteous to a person with a crown on, though I've not been decently civil myself lately.
Then Ross, feeling, perhaps, that he had inadvertently been betrayed into 'talking religion' (though he apparently didn't mind trying to 'live it') said irrelevantly, 'I wonder how Charlie has got on?'
'I am longing to know what she said to him, Ross.'
'Let's hope she kissed him "good-night, darling," which is what you're going to do to me now,' said my brother, whose face whitened suddenly as the pain seized him again.
At that moment Sam came in dragging a basket chair.
'I don't intend to argue it out again with you, Brown,' said his master coldly.
'Nor I with you,' said Brown.
The two men looked at one another, and I could almost hear the clashing of their wills.
'I don't feel up to it to-night, Sam.'
'I don't either, Master Ross.'
'Is your knee bad?'
'Putrid. I shan't sleep, anyway.'
'Are you telling me the truth, Brown?'
'I'm not in the habit of lying to you, sir.'
'Sorry,' said Ross, 'of course you aren't. You can stay if you have your bed wheeled in.'
'Thanks,' said the other briefly.
So I left them, and when I returned later with hot milk and biscuits, they were both smoking, each man in his bed, prepared to help the other 'stick it out.' I wondered as I made up the fire and filled their 'baccy pouches for them whether they would swear, or be courteous, during the long hours, and prayed that they might both get some sleep before the morning.
In the night I woke at four o'clock, so I went in to see the invalids. But the dear things were both asleep. He had been 'compassionate' to them instead!
Now, when I wake up at four o'clock there always is a row before the day is out, and to-day was no exception to the rule.
There were three letters by the first post. One from Michael saying that he would buy the cottage, one from Charlie explaining rather bitterly that he supposed he hadn't enough grandfathers, or that the cement was too hard for her to swallow, but anyway Monica had refused him; and one from the lady in question to the effect that 'Charlie didn't seem to mind much.'
I lost my temper then. What a fool Monica is! As usual, I didn't stop to think, but rushed straight up to London and told her so. I interviewed her in the boot cupboard at the hospital.
'You're a fool, Monica,' I said; 'you can't, even at your age, see farther than your nose. You've been so wrapped up all your life in family trees that you've never even seen the flower of Charlie's love.' (I got muddled up with Mr Williams's song. I felt somehow that Monica ought to be willing to lay snow-white flowers against Charlie's hair, and that she wasn't.) 'You've looked up so many pedigrees that you've never noticed his devotion all these years. What's cement when he's got everything else that matters. You've mistaken everything about him.Not mind? Why, he worships the ground you walk on, and I suppose presently you'll be sorry and think youdolike him after all. You never could make up your mind in time. Never could decide whether you wanted your new dress to be pink or blue, and when your mother spoilt you and gave you both you wished you had chosen shot, and when she gave you that, too, you wished it had been mauve.' (I was too angry and agitated to notice that a dress shot pink and bluewouldhave been mauve.) 'I'm absolutely sick of you. You've played with Charlie. You've let him care for you all these years and never let him speak, and when he does you refuse him. I'm tired of you,' I said. 'I'm done with you. You're too'—(I hesitated here and cast my mind round wildly for a word. I seemed to see my whole vocabulary, printed in columns like a spelling book, down which I ran a mental finger, rejecting them all until I came to 'patrician,' so I said)—'You're too patrician for me,' and I flung out of the boot cupboard.
Having quarrelled with my best friend and made her 'quick all bluggy,' I bolted into a post office and sent a frantic wire to 'Uncle John' to meet me at five o'clock at the cottage to talk about repairs. After that I did a heap of shopping, whirled into a registry office and put my name down for a cook, and was rude to the lady who ran the office because she seemed to imagine I must be dotty to think she could get me one at all, though she took my booking fee all right. Then I got in a panic and wondered whether I really did like the cottage now that it was finally decided, so I rushed home and routed Ross out to walk over to it and help me to make up my mind—like Monica.
The winter sun was setting as we walked up the red brick path, mellowing and beautifying the old place and filling the rooms with soft rose light. I felt quite sure I liked it.
'Uncle John' turned up at five o'clock as requested.
'Now,' said I, walking into what will be the drawing-room, 'what would you suggest here, Jones?'
'Well, mum,' said he, pulling his beard (it was one of his bushy days), 'I should think a nice yaller satin paper with a cream stripe would do 'ere, and a modern grate with a tiled hearth, that could be yaller to match the paper, or if you think that too conspishus you could 'ave it cream to match the stripe. I done one for a lady last week, and it looks a fair treat, that it do.'
I murmured weakly that I was sure it did, and did not venture to meet my brother's eye. Then we passed into the lovely old dining-room, with its oak panelling and beamed ceiling.
'Now 'ere,' said 'Uncle John,' warming to the job, 'you won't 'ave to go to no expense in fillin' up the fireplace; I dun that last year, but I should 'ave a nice gas fire, it saves a deal of work.' But the room he considered needed brightening up. 'A nice red paper, now, and this 'ere old panelling painted white.'
'By Jove,' said the incorrigible Ross, looking at me with a malicious grin, 'it would make the room lighter if you painted all the oak white, Meg, and you could have a green plush carpet and a red table cloth with ball fringe.'
'Uncle John' looked at him approvingly.
'Killing 'Uns ain't spoilt the young genelman's taste, I can see that,' he said, 'but I shouldn't 'ave nothing green, it is too conspishus, the two colours; keep it all red, that's what I say, mum. Walls, carpets, and curtings all to match; what you want to aim at, Mrs Ellsley, is a scheme o' colour, art in the 'ome is what you want; I done up a house for a lady like that, last week, dining-room red, drawing-room yaller, 'all green, bedrooms pink and blue, everythink to match and no expense spared, quite the palace, mum. Why, I could brighten up this old place so as you wouldn't know it.'
Am I lacking in moral courage? Could you have damped his ardour by word of mouth? He was so interested and friendly, so anxious to give the best advice. How could I tell him I wanted nothing but soft cream wash on the walls? and the only awful modern grate, that desecrated the whole house, pulled out? I didn't even want a geyser, his idea of the acme of comfort, ''ot bath of a Saturday night and no trouble.' So I weakly said I would go home and think it over and would write and tell him what I had decided. Ross vanished into the village drapers on the way home and came out waving a pattern of ball fringe.
''Ere yer are,' he giggled, 'best quality seven three, what 'o for art in the 'ome.'
A radiant Gidger met us at the door.
'The first parcel's come, muvver. Oh, Uncle Woss, do cut the string.'
'String,' said Ross, proceeding to try to untie every knot with his left hand, 'string is a very valuable thing, Gidg., and must on no account be wasted. Your cottage is only held up by the wallpaper, which your mother insists on having stripped off, so I expect we shall have to tie it up outside like a parcel.'
'Oh, what a lubberly supwise, muvver.' And, indeed, it was. Aunt Constance had sent us six pairs of realoldchintz curtains, enough for all my small windows, I should think. Such lovely soft colours: anemones and leaves on a cream ground, and a border that will make miles and miles of little frills for the top! I am now going to compose a suitable letter to 'Uncle John' about the wallpapers.
Oh, I nearly forgot to say that I have managed to get a cook after all, for 'Uncle John' brought his eldest daughter along with him and suggested I should try her, and as she had an excellent written reference from her last employer, who is now nursing in France, I engaged her on the spot, and Nannie says it's another modern miracle and no other woman ever had my luck!
Then I am keeping on the old man, Tidmarsh, nicknamed the Titmouse, who has always come in for two days a week and done the garden. He can give me full time and knows of a garden boy who will also do the boots and knives and all the other jobs that modern servants won't do. The boy's name isTench. Of course, Ross christened him 'the Stench' at once. The registry office at Tarnley sent a girl up this evening as parlourmaid. She amused me very much by saying, 'I don't consider myself an ordinary servant, I am very superior, and so is my family. I never go out, except to very special places, my mistresses have always been real ladies, they didn't know how to do anything.'
I am afraid I cannot aspire to that standard of gentility, but have engaged her and hope I shan't regret it.
Then the charlady of these rooms said,—
'My 'Ilda wants a place, would she do as 'ousemaid though she is a bit rough and young like?'
She came up to see me, and she proved to be a cheery soul, and perhaps the corners will rub off. I hope the superior parlourmaid won't be too superior to take on the job of training her. In any case there does not seem to be another housemaid in the world, so my choice is somewhat limited.
The staff, therefore, consists of the Titmouse, and the Stench for outside, and the Superior Person (commonly called the S.P.), the cook, who rejoices in the name of Dulcie, and 'my 'Ilda' for the house. Nannie insists she can manage for me and all the nursery part, if 'my 'Ilda' does the scrubbing.
It has turned very cold again after the thaw, and the frost made everything exceedingly slippery, the roads are like glass.
At dinner I said to Ross,—
'Aren't the paths slippery? Positively I could hardly get home this afternoon; I took one step forward and slid back two.'
'Do think, my dear,' said Ross, 'do try to use your brains, if you have any. If you had really taken one forward and two back you'd have found yourself back at the station.'
'I did, so took a taxi home, didn't you hear me drive up?'
'Humph,' said Ross. (I don't often get one in, do I?)
I am going to keep chickens and rabbits, as the meat question is difficult, and cockerels and young bunnies will help to feed the family. I suggested a goat, but Ross is dead off that. He thinks the Stenchanda goat will be too much for the S.P. and Dulcie.
I intend the Gidger to know all about animals and flowers and how they breed and propagate. Nature is beautiful and ignorance unlovely. So I shall not tell my little girl lies or half truths about sex, but shall unfold the facts of life gradually as she is able to bear them, so that her heart and mind may become as beautiful as her face promises to be.
Then some day she may go to her husband, not in that awful state of ignorance, fright, and misery that some call 'innocence,' but with a wide, sweet, sane knowledge of the beautiful mysteries of life.
CHAPTER XIII
Ross seems better. He is sleeping some hours each night without the bromide. I never heard how much of that Brown got him to take.
When I inquired how the knee was, Sam said,—
'Keeps pretty level with the arm, miss—ma'am, I should say.'
Now what does he mean by that?
There has been another thaw and everything is distinctly mucky, but yesterday, after lunch, I put on my shortest skirt and my oldest hat, the one with the pheasant wing in it that Michael likes, and we tramped over the dripping meadows to call on 'Uncle John.' 'Aunt John' opened the door. She was resplendent in black silk with a necklace of melon seeds and a pair of the most enormous pearl ear-rings, that even Cleopatra might have envied.
She invited us into the little front parlour. This room was almost entirely filled with a full-sized grand piano, which 'Uncle John' had bought at a sale cheap, owing to the fact that most of the notes were missing, 'But then,' as he explained, 'look at the case, real Hebony.'
He came in a few minutes after, looking a perfect ragamuffin in his stained overalls and battered hat, not at all a suitable mate for the resplendent vision in silk and melon seeds. The pair rather reminded me of Uncle Jasper and Aunt Constance—she dressed for dinner in all her finery and jewels and he just come in from grubbing out a foundation of a buried abbey. And 'Aunt John' looked at 'Uncle John' in much the same way that Aunt Constance looks at Uncle Jasper under the same circumstances.
'Fair caught, I am,' he exclaimed affably, shaking hands all round; 'ain't had it off yet, then?' he said to Ross by way of cheering up an invalid. And then with great pride he added, reverting to his first paragraph, 'but the missis fair makes up for it, don't she, always dressed up like a 'am bone of an afternoon is Sarah.'
'Well, mum,' he said, turning to me, 'I got your letter, and it's a fair blow, that it is; I don't say but what wall-papers ain't expensive and likely to go up, but if you could 'ave afforded the yaller with the cream stripe I think it would 'ave fair made the place. Perhaps if you wrote and told yer 'usband 'ow much better I say it would look 'e might be willing to do a bust for once, especially as you don't seem to cost 'im much in clothes,' and he glanced at my plain tweed skirt.
Here Ross tittered, as I happened to have mentioned at lunch the price I had paid for the garment in question.
''Owever, it ain't for me to say,' said 'Uncle John,' 'owe no man nothing is my motter and always 'as been, and it ain't always that I could give the wife a silk dress for the afternoon, is it, Sarah?'
Sarah, with ready tact, changed the conversation by offering us tea, and observed that John was always 'a bit free with his tongue.'
'Oh, no offence intended, I'm sure,' said 'Uncle John,' but the dear soul has it firmly fixed in his mind that we are rather poor, and he keeps assuring me that he will keep expenses down as much as possible. He will begin the work on Friday, with the owner's consent, although the deeds will not be actually signed by then. I hope we shall be in 'Our House' by the middle of March.
When we returned from calling on 'Uncle John' I found a letter asking me to go to Staple Inn this week to sign some deeds. But why should they want me to do that when Ross has Michael's Power of Attorney? I asked my brother if he knew, but he professed the most profound ignorance of everything in heaven and earth, except the evening paper (which was private).
So I had to possess my soul in patience all night, and this morning when we got to the lawyer's office I discovered two conspiracies.
Fancy! Michael has given me the cottage. Isn't it too sweet of him? I was quite overcome when the lawyer said that the deeds were to be in my name. I have never had anything of my own like that before, except £2 a year paid quarterly, that an old cousin left me.
When the lawyer had congratulated me on my elevation to the position of a landed proprietor, he said, 'And now, my dear young lady, I have another piece of news which will, I think, make you an even more radiant vision than you are at the moment.'
'Oh, lor!' Ross whispered, 'that's another 13/4 for poor old Michael; the larger the lie, Meg, the bigger the bill!'
And then the lawyer told me that all the family silver and the old furniture had been stored all these years by daddy's orders for me if I cared to have them.
My brother and I were so excited that we could hardly stop to say 'good-bye' to our legal adviser, but tumbled head-first downstairs and into a taxi. Ross exhorted the Jehu to drive furiously to the Furniture Depository, where I found all my treasures, all the things that in the old days made home, that had acquired a special value from their association quite apart from their intrinsic worth. I sat in the chair of the nine devils and cried for the days when mother used the things, wept because daddy had been so thoughtful, and because I badly wanted to hear him say the old joke I loved as a kiddie, 'Oh, can't you see the ninth devil? I can!'
I found in store the eight old wheel-back chairs which were used in the servants' hall at home and the two arm-chairs to match, which were always set at either end of the long table for the cook and parlourmaid. Woe betide any lesser lights that dared to sit in those seats of the mighty! Fashion changes rapidly, however, and they will be our best, oh, very best dining-room chairs, with little flat cushions added, perhaps, for comfort. Then there is mother's grandmother's gate leg table, it used to stand in the hall for cards and letters, but that will be used for us to dine at. I seem to see the flowers on it and the little pools of light made by the glass and silver and the soft reflection of the shaded candles on the oak.
I shall set the chair of the nine devils beside the fire. The corner cupboard with the one side longer than the other will do for glass and salts and peppers, but as our dining-room is low, it must stand instead of hang as it used to do at home. Alas for Aunt Amelia's feelings, the cupboard door is panelled and the four divisions form a cross! Then there is a funny old Devonshire dresser made of deal, with three deep drawers, that we used in the school-room. It will do for a sideboard, and the drawers, if divided and lined with green baize, will hold the forks and spoons. It is painted black and has fascinating drop handles. There is a hard, uncompromising Elizabethan air about it that just matches the heavy beams in the ceiling. There is a splendid old brass Chinese incense burner amongst the ornaments, and somewhere in one of my multifarious boxes I have a flaming square of crimson with that glorious embroidery only Chinese people produce. It shall be made into a cushion for the black oak chair, and be the only splash of colour in the room. One or two of the pictures will look quite nice. There is a quaint print, in an old maple frame—Speech Day at Christ's Hospital—rows of stately dames mixed up with Mayors and Aldermen and maces sit round the hall, listening to one of the pupils reciting an ode. The pride and agony on the headmaster's face near by is funny. 'Will he remember it all? Such a credit to the school.' This at home used to be in an attic, but I loved it because, the glass being cracked, it made the Mayor appear to squint. Evidently daddy remembered this, for he had written on the back on a bit of stamp paper, 'For Meg,' that was what started the tears.
There are a few silhouettes in black frames with acorns on the top. One is of Grandpa Fotheringham as a baby, and his mother has written the date at the back and added, 'Very like my little boy, so dear to me.' There is a painting, black with age, of one of my mother's family. She is a severe-looking old lady, with rather a low-necked bodice (too low for a Bishop's relative), but I forgot she was on the distaff side. She has huge, full, puff sleeves and her head is entirely covered with a large muslin cap with a goffered frill all round her face, tied under her chin. That must hang near the silhouettes, I think. I found in a box a funny old sampler framed in an ancient black and gilt frame. It is a picture, beautifully sewn in faded silks, of a little girl and a lamb sitting under a tree in a meadow, which looks damp, and her home is in the distance at the back. She, too, is in a low-necked gown, with short sleeves, and she wears a muslin erection on her head. She is loving the lamb, which is extremely woolly. He is made entirely of French knots, so if you know what those are you will know how very woolly that lamb is. There is a pair of small shoes peeping out from under the little girl's gown, they are red. Somehow I feel that they are her best ones, and I don't believe her mother knows she's got them on. They look most unsuitable for a damp meadow, and the lamb will step on them in a minute, and then there'll be trouble. She'll probably cry.
When I got home I found a batch of letters and a picture from Uncle Jasper. It is a copy of one in the cathedral library at Canterbury. I will copy out a bit of his letter, which is so typical of the darling pet:—