.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 49400
   :PG.Title: Experience
   :PG.Released: 2015-07-08
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Catherine Cotton
   :DC.Title: Experience
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1922
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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EXPERIENCE
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   This charming chronicle has no plot.

   It is an attempt to present a happy, witty
   simple-minded woman who attracted love
   because she gave it out, and tried to make her
   home a little well of happiness in the desert of
   the world.  After all most people live their
   lives without its incidents forming in any sense
   a "plot."  However, to tell this sort of story
   is difficult; the attention of the reader must
   be aroused and held by the sheer merit of the
   writing, and the publishers believe they have
   found in Catherine Cotton a writer with just
   the right gifts of wit, sympathy,
   and understanding.

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      EXPERIENCE

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      *by*

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      CATHERINE COTTON

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      LONDON 48 PALL MALL
      \W. COLLINS SONS & CO LTD
      GLASGOW SYDNEY AUCKLAND

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      Copyright

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      First Impression, June, 1922
      Second Impression, November, 1922
      Third Impression, January, 1923
      Fourth Impression, September, 1923
      Fifth Impression, March, 1925
      Sixth Impression, April, 1926
      Seventh Impression, October, 1927
      Eighth Impression, February, 1928
      Ninth Impression, October, 1928
      Tenth Impression, July, 1929

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      *Printed in Great Britain*

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      TO
      ARTHUR, CHARLIE, ROSS, ALEC, AND BOB
      (Five very gallant gentlemen who gave their lives
      for England)

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   PREFACE

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It has been said that 'Novelists are the Showmen
of life.'  Perhaps because the world has passed
through a time of special stress and strain it has
come about that the modern novel is largely
concerned with the complexities of life and is very
often an unhappy and a tiring thing to read.

Yet humour, happiness, and love exist and are
just as real as gloom, so need the 'realism' of a
book be called in question because it pictures
pleasant scenes?

For there are still some joyous souls who smile
their way through life because they take its
experience with a simplicity that is rarer than it used
to be.

This, then, is the story of a woman whose outlook
was a happy one; whose mind was never rent by
any great temptations, and who, because she was
NOT 'misunderstood in early youth,' never struggled
for 'self-expression,' but only to express herself
(in as many words as possible!) to the great
amusement and uplifting of her family!

For these reasons this book, like that of the
immortal Mr Jorrocks, 'does not aspire to the
dignity of a novel,' but is just a story—an April
mixture of sun and shadow—as most lives are;
a book to read when you're tired, perhaps, since
it tells of love and a home and garden and such
like restful things.  And if it makes you smile and
sigh at times, well, maybe, that is because life
brings to many of us, especially to the women folk,
very much the same 'experience.'

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\C. \C.

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.. _`PART I`:

.. _`CHAPTER I`:

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   PART I

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'When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a
child, I thought as a child....'

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   CHAPTER I

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Aunt Constance was away, but, as it was my
birthday, I invited myself to lunch with Uncle
Jasper.  Father and Ross came too.  In the middle
of lunch my uncle looked at me over the top of his
glasses and said,—

'Well, Meg, so you are seventeen and have left
school.  What are you going to do now?'

An idea that had been simmering in my mind
for some days suddenly came on top,—

'I'm going to write a book.'

Ross stared at me, aghast.  'Jerubbesheth!'
he exclaimed, 'when you could hunt three days a
week, walk a puppy, and do the things that really
matter.  What fools girls are!'

'Have you sufficient knowledge of any one
subject to write a book about it?' Uncle Jasper
inquired.

'Oh, my angel,' I exclaimed, 'I don't refer to the
stuff you and father produce.  I'm not going to
write a treatise on architecture, or Dante, or the
Cumulative Evidences of the Cherubim.  I mean
fiction—a story—a novel.'

'But even so,' persisted my uncle, 'you can't
write about things of which you know nothing!'

'But you don't have to know about things when
you write fiction.  You make it up as you go along,
don't you see?'

'You only want a hero and a heroine and a plot,'
my brother giggled.

'And a strong love interest,' said father, and he
twinkled at me; 'even Dante——'

'Oh, daddy, *must* you bring in Dante?' I said.
'He was such a terrible old bore and he didn't even
marry the girl.'

Uncle Jasper gazed at me as if I were a tame
gorilla or a missing link, or something that looked
as if it ought to have brains but somehow hadn't.
'Dear me!' he said.  'Well, go on, Meg, but if you
merely make up your story as you go along you
will get your background dim and confused and
your characterisation weak.'

'I can't think what you mean,' I groaned.

'Why, Meg, if you lay your plot in the fourteenth
century, for instance, your characters must be
clear cut, mediæval, and tone with the background,
don't you see?  It would require a great deal of
research to get the atmosphere of your century
right.'

'But I shan't write about the fourteenth century,'
I said in slow exasperation.  'My book will be
about the present time.  I shall write of the things
I know.'

'Well, but what *do* you know, little 'un?  That's
what we are trying to get at,' said daddy, with his
appalling habit of bringing things suddenly to a
head.

'It's rather difficult to say offhand, father, but
I know something of the fauna of the South Pole,
and about Influenza (I've had it four times), and
a lot about ski-ing——'

'If you could see yourself ski-ing you wouldn't
say so,' said my brother with his usual candour,
'your methods are those of a Lilienfeldian
wart-hog, and as for your Telemarks—ye gods!'

I ignored my brother and continued: 'My
knowledge of flowers is extensive, and I know two
bits of history and——'

'Could we have the two bits now without waiting
for the novel?'

'Oh, certainly, Uncle Jasper.' (I always like
to oblige my family when I can).  'The first is the
one that everybody remembers: William I., 1066,
married Matilda of Flanders, but I have had
an expensive education, as daddy often says, so I
know, too, that William II., 1087, never married.'

'Dear me,' said my uncle, again with his
indulgent-to-the-tame-gorilla look.

Daddy laughed and got up.  'Well, I should
think it would be a most interesting book, though
how you will work in the two bits of history with
the fauna of the South Pole, influenza, and ski-ing
passes the comprehension of a mere male thing!'

Then he kissed me for some extraordinary
reason and said that he expected I should get to
know some other things as I went along, and Uncle
Jasper blew his nose violently, and Ross observed
that I was a funny little ass.  After that we went
home.

Father had a choir practice or something after
dinner, and Ross said he had to see a man about a
dog (he can't possibly want another), so I retired
to my own special domain to start my novel.

I was rummaging in my handkerchief box for
a pencil when Nannie came in with a ream of
sermon paper and a quart bottle of ink, followed
by a procession of servants bearing the *New English
Dictionary* as far as the letter T, which Daddy
thought might be useful.  In the course of the
next hour Ross sent up a wet towel and a can
marked 'Midnight Oil,' and a note arrived from
Uncle Jasper to say that he had omitted to mention
that it was better 'to resolutely avoid' split
infinitives (whatever they are), and that if I felt
bound at times to write of things I didn't know,
it was quite a good tip to shove in a quotation
from the best authority on the subject, and that his
library was at my disposal at any time.  He said,
too, that he had a spare copy of the *Record
Interpreter*, if it would be of any use.

My uncle's jokes are like that; no ordinary person
can see them at all.

But two can play at 'pulling legs,' so I sewed
up the legs of my brother's pyjamas, put the wet
towel and the can of oil in his bed, and the dictionary
in father's, and, having poured the quart of ink in
their two water-jugs, I sat down with great
contentment to fulfil my life's ambition.

I thought over the subjects on which my knowledge
was irrefutable, but a novel inspired by any
one of them seemed impossible, and by 10.30 p.m. I
was suffering from bad brain fag.  Then Nannie
came in to brush my hair, so I confided my troubles
to her, as I always do.

'I seem to be a most ignorant person, Nannie;
the only thing I really know about is the family.'

'Well, write a book about that, dearie, I'm sure
it's mad enough.'

'But then there wouldn't be a plot.'

'No more there is in most people's lives, not the
women's, anyway.'

'Has your life been very dull, darling?' I asked.

'My life,' said Nannie solemnly, 'has been one
large hole with bits of stocking round that I have
had to try and draw together.'

When Ross came up his remarks about his bed
were of so sulphurous a character that I swear I
could almost see the brimstone blowing under my
door.  And in the silent watches of the night I
decided that my book *shall* be about the family,
from the time it was born to the day it was buried.
Surely something in the nature of a plot will turn
up in between.





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.. _`CHAPTER II`:

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   CHAPTER II

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To begin at the beginning.  When I was waiting
to be born I must have run up to God and said,—

'Please, *could* this little boy come, too?'

And perhaps He laughed and answered,—

'Oh, certainly, Miss Fotheringham, as you make
such a point of it,' for Ross and I are twins, and
we have lived all our life in this little Devonshire
village that is tucked into a hollow in the hills.
Daddy is the parson here and Uncle Jasper the
lord of the manor.  But this place is not 'clear
cut,' as Uncle Jasper says my 'background' ought
to be.  It is just a soft jumble of ferns and flowers,
of misty mornings and high hedges, of sunshine,
of shadows and sweet scents, of hills and dales,
of all the countless things that go to make the
village so lovely and so baffling.

I think Devonshire is like a beautiful but elusive
woman.  You think you know her very well, you
walk about her lanes and woods, but when you
think to capture her soul she ripples away from
you in one of her little rushing torrents, just as a
woman escapes from the lover who thought he had
almost caught and kissed her!

This old-world Vicarage stands in a large and
fragrant garden opposite the entrance to the park.
If you walk through the great gates and up the
long avenue you come to the Elizabethan manor
house where my aunt and uncle live with their
son, Eustace, and all the family retainers.

Oh! and they are a priceless couple.  He isn't
interested in anything 'later' than the Middle
Ages, she in nothing 'earlier' than Heaven.  But
their lives are most harmonious, and together
they 'wallow in old churches,' he absorbed in
aumbries and piscinas, she in the prayer and praise
part.  Then, perhaps, he'll call her,—

'Constance, look at this floating cusp!'

She admires his treasure, her eyes limpid and
sweet with saints and angels, and thinks, 'Why,
if I stopped praising the very stones here would
cry out,' and so they both take a deep interest in
the moulding for quite different reasons.

It's the same with meals.  He's always late—she's
always patient.  She doesn't try to be, she *is*.
He'll come in half an hour after the time for
luncheon.  'Constance, I'm so sorry, I'm afraid
I'm late, I hope you haven't waited.  I found such
a fascinating bit of Norman work in that church.'  She
knows he doesn't mean to be discourteous,
but that he's got simply no idea of time, while she
is always thinking of eternity, so she says gently,
'It doesn't matter, Jasper, if you hurry now,
dear.  I always prefer to wait.'

She is such a stately beauty, such a very great
lady.  She makes all the other women feel their
gloves are shabby.  Her white hair shines so that
I always think it's 'glistering,' and her nose is
quite straight, the kind you see in a cathedral on
a stone archbishop, and her clothes are 'scrummy,'
so *really* beautiful that you hardly realise them.
They are part of her, and she harmonises with
the background.  Her tweeds are just the heather
she walks about in, and at night it's only her
lovely old lace that shows you where her neck
leaves off and her shimmering cream satin gown
begins.

Uncle Jasper worships the ground she walks on,
while for her, 'Jasper' comes just after God.

But although my uncle thinks her so adorable,
he can't keep even his compliments quite free
of his ruling passion.

'Constance,' he said one day, 'you *are* beautiful,
why, you've got mediæval ears!'

And 'Constance' blushed at that because,
coming from him, it was a most tremendous
compliment, and she was secretly rather glad, I
expect, that when ears were doled round she
got a pair with the lobes left out.  Funny old
Uncle Jasper!

But though—

   |  'For him delicious flavours dwell
   |    In Books, as in old muscatel,'

he's quite a decent landlord.  There are no leaky
roofs on his estate.  Daddy says it's because of
his feudal mind.  I don't know if that is why the
whole village seems like a family.  We are interested
in all the cottage folk, and they in us, just as our
fathers were before us.  Uncle Jasper looks after
their material interests and Daddy saves their
souls; Ross bosses all the boys, and I cuddle
the babies, while Aunt Constance is like that lady
in E. B. Browning's poem, whose goodness was
that nice, invisible sort.  She too

   |  'Never found fault with you, never implied
   |    Your wrong by her right, and yet men at her side
   |  Grew nobler, girls purer, as through the whole town
   |    The children were gladder that pulled at her gown.'
   |

Father is an Evangelical, but my Aunt Constance
is what the village people call a little 'high' in her
religion.  She would like flowers and candles, too,
in church, if daddy would have them, which he
won't, and she keeps the fast days, but unostentatiously.
Yet she and father live in harmony and
love, and only laugh a little at each other!

But my cousin Eustace annoys me.  He is so
good and holy.  He is short and thin and pale and
vacillating, and wears overcoats and carries an
umbrella.  In fact, he is everything that his mother
and father aren't.  Ross doesn't get on with him,
and finds him 'tiring.'  Daddy says he is a throwback.
I asked Eustace once if one of his ancestors
could possibly have been a nun as he is so like a
monk himself.  He said I was simply abominable
and wouldn't speak to me all day.  In the evening
he said he was sorry, as quite obviously I didn't know
what I was talking about.  Naturally I wouldn't
speak to him then.  Such a way to apologise!

Nannie was our old nurse, but since mother died
she has been housekeeper.  She is a comfortable
kind of person.  Any one who is tired, or cold, or
hurt, or hungry, or very small is always Nannie's
'lamb,' though how the radiant six-foot-one and
still-growing Ross can come under that category
I don't know, unless it's because he's always
hungry.  But he has ever been, and is, and will
remain, her 'lamb.'

Father is Uncle Jasper's brother and not an
easy person to explain.  He is a handsome, great
tall thing, and a mixture of Dante and horses, dogs,
humility, sport, and autocracy, but he is most
adorable and has a divine sense of humour.  Aunt
Constance says he is a mystic, but I don't know
what she means.  I have never been able to
understand how he came to be a parson at all, for every
inch of him is soldier.  He has got a temper, too,
only he doesn't lose it when most people lose theirs.
He's dreadfully difficult about some things.  He is
so fastidious about clothes, especially mine.  I
think his eyes must magnify like a shaving-glass.
He sees holes which are perfectly invisible to me.
There is in me a certain carelessness about the
things that show (I *must* be perfect underneath),
but a button off my shoe doesn't really worry me
unless the shoe comes off.  A jag in my tweeds leaves
me cold, and the moral aspect of a hole in my
glove doesn't weigh with me at all.  Besides, as I
said to father one day when I was being rowed,—

'If I have a *hole* in my skirt it would appear as if
I had just torn it, but if I have a darn it would look
like premeditated poverty.'

My brother Ross is going into the army.  He's
awfully like father if you leave out Dante and the
humility part and shove in a perpetual bullying
of his sister.  But he's not a mystic.  Oh, dear, no!
He loves this world with all its pomps and horses,
adores its vanities, its coloured socks and
handkerchiefs and ties.  He is a radiant person with a
great capacity for friendship.  He is nice to every
one until a chap spills things down his clothes,
and then my brother slowly freezes and curls up
and is 'done with him.'

He and I do not always dwell together in harmony
and love.  We 'fight' most horribly at times, but
I adore him really, though I wouldn't let him know
it.  It would be frightfully bad for him.  I run my
male things on the truest form of kindness lines.
They always loathe it.

And mother?  Oh, I can't write about her at
all, even though it's so long since she died; she was
half Irish and so pretty and so gay.  She fell off a
step ladder one day when she was gathering roses,
and Ross found her unconscious, and that night
she died.  I couldn't understand why a broken
arm should kill her till daddy explained that the
hope of another little son went with her, too.
Father's eyes have never looked the same since;
there is still a hurt look in them.

Then there's Sam.  He is not a relative, but
always seems like one; he is the jolly boy who
lives at Uncle Jasper's lodge and is Ross's greatest
friend and most devoted slave.  Why, when Ross
first went to Harrow Sam ran away from home
and turned up as the school boot-boy (and got an
awful licking from my brother for his pains), and
now as Ross is at Sandhurst he has got taken on
there, too.  He will do anything to be within a
hundred miles of Ross.  I come in for a share of
his devotion because I am his idol's sister.  What
that boy doesn't know about fishing, birds' eggs,
and the Hickley woods isn't worth knowing.  But
Sam has been known to turn and rend Ross for
his good (I love to see him doing it), just as Brown,
Sam's father, who is head gardener at the Manor
House, turns and rends Uncle Jasper once every
ten years or so, when his ideas have become too
archaic to be borne by any man who wants to
make some alterations to improve the gardens.





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.. _`CHAPTER III`:

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   CHAPTER III

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We have a family skeleton.  It is my Aunt Amelia.
She isn't illegitimate or anything like that.  This
book is quite respectable.  Nor is she thin.  She
has a high stomach and is as proud as it is high.
She always wears black broché dresses, even the
first thing in the morning.  Nannie says they are
most beautiful quality and would stand alone.
She adorns herself with cameo brooches and rings
with hair inside, and she wears square-toed boots
and stuff gloves that pull on without buttons.
Daddy says all Evangelicals do, except his daughter.

She has been a widow for many years.  Indeed
she only lived with her husband six months from
her virginity, and then he died of the 'Ammonia,'
as the village children call it.  My aunt never goes
out without her maid, Keziah, and she carries a
disgusting 'fydo' everywhere.  She talks religion
all day long, and quotes texts at people.  She
brings out my prickles.

Father says that no one will know what a 'fydo'
is, and that I am not to be disrespectful, because
she is a really good woman and has the missionary
spirit.  Father is like that, he has a kind of humility
that won't let him say beastly things about any
one.  My brother is not so particular.  He used to
say that he wouldn't let the chaps at school know
he had an aunt who talked about his soul like a
little Bethel for anything this world could offer
him.  Besides, I should have thought that any one
would know that a 'fydo' is any bloated dog of
uncertain ancestry that stinks and pants.

Our only other relative is daddy's cousin Emily.
She lives in Hampstead, next door but five to
Aunt Amelia.  Her parrot can say the collect for
the seventeenth Sunday after Trinity.

Cousin Emily is a spinster, but she has a grand
passion in her life, and it is animals.  She will have
nothing killed, with the result that her house is
overrun with mice and the garden's full of snails.
She visits the poor in the East End and gives away
flannel petticoats at Christmas large enough to fit
the dome of St Paul's.  The last time father stayed
there she caught a flea in the slums, but of course
she couldn't destroy it.  She was greatly agitated
and went about the house with the wretched
creature clasped in her arms, as it were, waiting
for an inspiration as to what to do with it.  Finally
she decided to put it on the cat's back, and was quite
happy till father wickedly said he did not think
that arrangement was fair on the cat.

Then she wished she had thrown it down the
cellar stairs, but daddy teased her and said, 'the
poor thing might have broken its leg and lain
amid the wine bottles in anguish, unable even to
help itself to brandy or anything.'  The poor old
dear thereupon said, 'But, dear cousin, what shall
I do if I find another?' and her dear cousin advised
her strongly to let the house furnished.

But I like her awfully.  So does Ross.  He says
she is a ripping old bird.  She gives us topping
presents.  She sent me two of the darlingest white
and fawn rabbits, exactly alike, when I was a
kiddie.  One was called 'Nada the Lily' and the
other 'dear Buckiebuckie,' but I found the mental
strain of life too great when I found ten little
rabbits in dear Buckiebuckie's cage.  He seemed
so pleased with them, too; that's what worried
me so.  He didn't seem to know how wrong it was,
and neither did Nada the Lily, for she sat in placid
indifference by her empty nest box.

Aunt Amelia was staying with us at the time,
so I asked her about it, but she said it was not a
nice thing for any little girl to talk about, especially
a clergyman's daughter.  I shed tears then and ran
out in the woods, but Nannie followed me,—

'Oh, what an old fool the woman is; how much
longer is she going to stay?  Don't you worry,
dearie, 'tisn't the first time that a buck and doe's
got mixed, and won't be the last neither.  I expect
you got 'em muddled when you cleaned them out.'

Thus Nannie brought a situation, electric with
insuperable difficulties, down to the level of homely
everydayness, where I felt I could cope with it.
She is always like that.  I changed dear
Buckiebuckie's name then to 'Adam and Eve,' because
he was the mother of all living and he'd 'ad em!
Somehow, when we were children there always
seemed to be trouble when Aunt Amelia was in
the house.  We always said dreadful things in
front of her, or else the things we usually said were
noticed more.

The very first time she came to stay, when we
were six years old, there were two ructions in as
many minutes.

We had a hen at that time called 'The Old Maid,'
because she was of uncertain age and used to peck
the others, and as she hadn't earned her board
and keep we had her boiled for luncheon.  It was
some one's birthday and we kids were allowed to
lunch downstairs.  Father carved and in great
disgust said,—

'Whatever bird is this?'

'"The Old Maid," daddy,' said Ross.

'Well, it doesn't seem to have much breast.'

'But then,' as my small brother remarked, 'you
wouldn't expect an old maid to have much, would you?'

I made the next *faux pas*, but it was kindly meant.
Aunt Amelia grumbled that she had been quite
chilly in the night and hadn't been able to sleep,
so I said,—

'Mother, couldn't we search the parish for a
young virgin for Aunt Amelia like King David
had when he was old and gat no heat?'

Father exploded into his tumbler.  But Aunt
Amelia said she had hoped that I would grow up
a good, pure woman like my grandmother.  Daddy
lost his temper then and said he profoundly hoped
his daughter wouldn't grow up 'a good, pure
woman' if it meant that——'

'Anthony!' said mother.

And father said 'Sorry, Biddy,' and asked
Aunt Amelia if she'd have some more bread
sauce.

(Mother and daddy always called hot water
bottles 'Young Virgins' after that!)

After lunch we all went down to the lake, and
going through the woods I said something was
'infernal,' and there was a horrid silence.  Daddy
is like that, he so seldom says anything.  It's
what he doesn't say that's so beastly if he's
displeased with one, so I said, 'Mustn't I, daddy?'
and he replied, 'I think you know quite well,
darling.'

'But,' I expostulated, 'surely one might
sometimes.'  I looked round that wood.  'Why, daddy,
I might say we were in fernal regions now, look at
them all up that bank.'

Daddy looked amused and his eyes all curled
up at the corners,—

'Well, darling, perhaps you're right, but you
must always think of Devonshire if you do.'

Aunt Amelia said she didn't know what his dear,
dead mother would say, after the Christian
upbringing he had had, too.  Daddy seemed inclined
to lose his temper again and remarked that a certain
kind of Christian upbringing was only another
name for spiritual slavery.  Aunt Amelia threw
up her hands and said 'Shocking.'  Then father
whispered to mother that if Aunt Amelia didn't
return to Hampstead soon he'd have to go
into lodgings!  He always says that if he's
worried.

General conversation is apt to languish in Aunt
Amelia's presence and to come back like a
boomerang to some exhausting topic that most people
never discuss.  She understands father better
now and thinks he's 'one of the right sort' because
he happens to be an Evangelical, but she says he
is 'dangerously charitable,' and always tries to
find out if he's *really* sound on the subject of
candles.

I remember once daddy, gently teasing, said,—

'But, dear Amelia, I thought it was your friends
Ridley and Latimer who lighted a candle in
England which should never be put out.  If
I were asked to celebrate at a church where
they had lights what do you think I ought to do?'

And Amelia answered, 'I should hope you'd blow
'em out.'  Then daddy said,—

'What a pearl you are, Amelia!' and laughed
and kissed the stern old Calvinist.  Somehow
daddy could live with an Anabaptist or the Pope,
and both would say, 'He's one of the right sort,'
even though they'd disagreed with every single
thing he'd said.  Darling daddy!





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.. _`CHAPTER IV`:

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   CHAPTER IV

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Well, I have got in the 'background' now, and
the dramatis personæ too, but do they 'tone' with
one another and how can I make them when
they are all different?  Is my Aunt Amelia in the
least like Devonshire?  Does her fydo remind one
of its sweet scents?  How can I reconcile my
prehistoric uncle with the twentieth century?

I went to the Manor House to-day to consult
him as to the 'atmosphere' of the century.  Perhaps
I can at any rate get that right.  He wasn't
particularly illuminating.  I don't think clever people
ever are.  The more they know the less they can
impart.  There was a woman at school who tried
to teach me German.  She had heaps of letters
after her name like Uncle Jasper has.  She said
the verb must go at the end, but she never could
make me understand which part of the verb.  I
got so desperate at last that I used to say, 'gehabt
gehaben geworden sein' at the end of *every*
sentence and let her take her choice.  That's partly
why I left school when I did.  The head mistress
seemed to think parental control was what I
needed.

So I said to Uncle Jasper, 'What would you
say was the atmosphere of this century?'

'You have raised a point of particular
perspicacity, Meg,' he replied.  'The atmosphere of
this century is becoming increasingly materialistic,
as is manifested in its deplorable lack of spirituality
and intellectual originality.  The universal
diminution of intelligent ratiocination, the vacuous
verbosity of a vacillating press; the decadent
and open opportunism of our public men, the
upward movement of the proletariat, inspired by
the renegade and socialistic vampires that suck
the national blood—all these are symptomatic of
the recrudescence of materialism.'

He stopped to breathe here, and I felt I must
say gehabt gehaben geworden sein.  He doesn't
always talk like that.  Sometimes I think he
does it to aggravate me, but I know anything
modern upsets him.  I offered to go with him to
look at the Saxon work in the church, as it usually
has a calming influence on him, but he said he
was better and he hoped he had made himself
clear!

When I got home I asked Nannie.

'The atmosphere of this century, dearie,' she
said.  'Oh, the same as it's always been, I should
think—three white frosts and a wet day, or three
fine days and a thunderstorm.'

I observed that she had made a remark of
particular perspicacity, and she asked me if I felt
feverish.  It is trying when I am trying to increase
my vocabulary.  Still, on the whole she was helpful,
for she said why didn't I do what I said I was
going to and write of the things I know about.
'Tell about the Hickley woods and how you fell
in the water, dearie.'

'But will the general public like that, Nannie?'

'I should think they'd prefer it to the stuff your
uncle writes.'

I feel that she's right.  I must take a firm stand
with my relatives.  I cannot be blown about by
every breath of their doctrine.  Besides, my family's
views differ.  Uncle Jasper says,—

'The general public is at its best in Oxford and
Canterbury.'

'At Epsom or Ascot,' my brother asserts.

'Hunting,' says daddy.

'At early celebration on Easter Day,' says Aunt
Constance, with eyes like a Murillo Madonna.

But *I* like the general public, always, everywhere.
It sort of twinkles at one, so I shall tell
about the Hickley woods and hope that it will like
them just as much as I do.

Oh, if only I could get the splendour of the
woods down on my paper—the flaming beeches
in the autumn, the fairyland of hoar frost later on,
the gradual waking of the trees and birds and
flowers in the spring, the scent of clover, and the
sheets of daffodills, the mist of bluebells and the
clouds of lilies.  I know where the earliest primroses
blow and the hedge where the birds build first.  I
could show you where to find the biggest blackberries
and the bit of bog covered with the kingcups
and milkmaids.  There are ant hills, too, and a
wasps' nest in a hollow tree.  The little paths and
lanes are carpeted with moss and the undergrowth
is sweet with honeysuckle.  The woods are always
lovely, but in the evening they grow 'tulgy,' and
the trees take fantastic shapes and the mossy lanes
seem hushed and filled with mystery.  When I
was little I used to be glad then that the boys were
with me, though I wouldn't have admitted a
creepy feeling down my spine to any one but
father.  The beautiful Hickley woods!

They have a strange effect upon me.  They
seem to 'wash' my mind.  I never found it easy
to be obedient, my bit of Irish blood always
making me 'agin the government.'  I've got claws
inside me, and feathers underneath my skin that
get ruffled when I'm crossed.  So when I was little
and rebellious I always ran out of the house and
across the garden into the woods.  And sometimes
Ross would come flying after me with comfort and
advice.

'Why do you always run out in the woods Meg,
when you're naughty?'

''Cos they wash me.'

'Oh, you are funny, darling,' and then with a
little air of protection that is always associated
in my mind with Ross and sticks of chocolate, he
would give me one and say,—

'But you *were* raver naughty, you know; I think
you'd better come in now and be sorry.'

So when the woods had 'washed' me sufficiently
I would go in and say I was dutiful now if father
pleased.  But once when I was five and some
reproof of daddy's had cut me to the heart, I
added,—

'But my quick still hurts me.  It's all bluggy.'

I seem to have lived the best part of my life out
in the woods.  In them we played our games and
had our endless picnics.  In them I had the great
adventure which caused me to become a doormat
and let my brother trample on me all his life.

When Ross and I were twelve we went out very
early to spend a long day in the woods with Sam
and all the dogs.  We made for the lake.  It was
always the first item on our programme to dump
the lunch and tea in a special hidyhole.  While the
boys were busy I decided that the one and only
thing I wanted to do was to climb out and sit on
the branch of a tree that overhung the water.
I got halfway across it when Ross shouted to me
angrily to come back, and Sam said the branch was
rotten.

'I'm going to the end,' I said, 'it isn't rotten.'

'*Will* you come back, Meg?'

'No, I won't,' I cried, my Irish grandmother at
once 'agin the government.'  I just loved that
crawl across that tree, because the boys were
simply furious and could do nothing.  It was no
use coming after me if the branch were rotten, it
would only have made things worse.  When I got
to the end I said elegantly, 'Yah, I told you it
wasn't,' and as I said it the beastly thing snapped
and I went into the lake with a splash.  I could
swim all right but hadn't had any practice with my
clothes on.  Sam and Ross were in after me like
a flash and got me back to land, and we stood
three dripping objects, two in a perfect fury with
the third.  Then, as my luck was dead out, we
heard the horses, and there were mother and daddy,
Uncle Jasper and Aunt Constance out for a morning
ride.  Uncle Jasper was suddenly jerked back out
of the Middle Ages: Aunt Constance tumbled
out of heaven, mother looked frightfully worried,
and daddy lost his temper, and said it was simply
abominable that two big boys of their age couldn't
look after a little girl of mine.  But how he
reconciled that remark with his Christian conscience I
don't know, seeing there was only six months
difference between the eldest and the youngest—but
those boys would always grow so.

Daddy ordered them to go home at once, and
when they had got into dry things to wait in his
dressing-room till he had leisure to give them the
biggest thrashing they'd ever had yet.

Then mother wrung out my clothes, and Uncle
Jasper remarked that the children who lived before
the Reformation never behaved so badly; Aunt
Constance had got to that bit of the General
Thanksgiving where you bless Him for preservation,
especially of nieces and nephews and boys who
live at lodges; Ross and Sam were just turning to
go home when I—honestly it was the first minute
I could speak, I had swallowed such a lot of
water—exclaimed,—

'Father, how dare you be so wickedly unjust?'

Every one looked at me as I hurled that bombshell.
People didn't usually speak so to father—least
of all his children, but daddy never gets angry
at the things you'd think he would, and all he said
was,—

'What do you mean, little 'un?'

'Why, father, they told me not to go.'

'It was my fault, sir; I ought to have seen she
didn't,' Ross interrupted.

'I don't suppose she heard me say the branch
was rotten, sir,' said Sam.

But I exclaimed,—

'Oh, daddy, they are telling frightful lies; I
did hear Sam say that it was rotten, and Ross told
me not to go.'

So father said, 'Sorry, old chaps,' to Ross and
Sam, and they said, 'It was quite all right, sir.'  So
father said, 'Well, run her home, boys, so that
she doesn't catch cold,' and mother called after us,
'Give her some hot milk.'

So Ross and Sam ran me home and said I was
a jolly decent kid, which was drivel.  And after
Nannie had got me dry, I went and waited in
father's dressing-room.  As he and mother came
upstairs I heard daddy say,—

'Well, I suppose I must get into a dog collar as
I've got this beastly clerical meeting.'

And mother laughed,—

'I don't think the collar makes much difference
when the rest of you smells so of dogs and stables.'  And
then she added in her delicious Irish brogue,
'I know it isn't seemly to ask a parson to leave
the Word of God and serve tables, but *do* you know
a savoury that would do for to-night?'

And daddy said,—

'I've just seen a beauty in the woods.'

'What *do* you mean, Anthony,' laughed mother.
And father replied,—

'An angel on horseback, darling,' and told her
not to blush.  He came in then, and saw me, and
said,—

'Hallo, little 'un, what are you doing here?'

'I thought *I* had to come, father, as I did it.'

'Oh—ah, yes, of course—I've got to give you
the biggest thrashing you've ever had in your
life, haven't I?'  And he sat down and pulled me
on his knee.

'Why did you do it, Meg?  No, don't say it was
your Irish grandmother' (taking the very words
out of my mouth) 'it was pure, unadulterated
devil, and mother doesn't feel that she can ever let
you go out in the woods again, and I don't think
the boys will take the responsibility of you any
more, either.'

'Father!' I exclaimed, going cold all over.

'Well, you see, darling, it isn't the first time is
it?  There was that wasps' nest, for instance.
You know those boys do understand that sort of
thing.  And unless you promise in future you will
do exactly what they tell you, I won't let you go,
but shall keep you chained up in my dressing-room.
I really can't let my only daughter drown,
I shouldn't mind so much if I had dozens.
Promise?'

So I said, 'Yes, daddy, sorry, I——'

But father interrupted.  'I've simply got to
give you a thrashing as well, little 'un, because
once or twice before you've said you were sorry,
but it will have to be a moral one.  I can't thrash
a thing your size; why *don't* you grow?  I'm sure
you could if you really tried, it's just cussedness.
Now you go down to Sam and Ross, they're in the
harness room, and tell them you're sorry and that
you're going to do what they tell you in future.'

And I said, 'Daddy, I simply couldn't; why,
I'd never hear the last of it, I couldn't get it out.'

So father said, 'Well, you can take your choice
between your pride and the Hickley Woods,
darling.'

So I went down to the harness room and got it
out somehow.  Ross said, 'Oh, I say, Meg, *don't*
say any more, it won't make a scrap of difference,
but if you wouldn't mind about wasps' nests and
that kind of thing, we would be so obliged, wouldn't
we, Sam?'

And Sam said 'Rather' and gave me a red
apple.  I always got one from Sam if I were in a
row....  Of course, I've had a dog's life with the
pair of them ever since.





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.. _`CHAPTER V`:

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   CHAPTER V

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When Ross and I were fifteen we got to know a
topping boy named Charlie Foxhill.  He is
amphidextrous.  His father is most frightfully rich.
He made his money in cement, but this is never
mentioned because Mrs Foxhill is the daughter
of an impecunious peer, and she is as proud as the
cement is hard.  The Foxhills came to live in the
next village to ours.  My great friend, Monica
Cunningham, lives there too, at least she is there
sometimes.  Her father is a baron, but you would
never know it to look at him.  He takes a great
interest in patent manures and the ten lost tribes.

Charlie is two years older than Ross, but so
much shorter that they seem the same age.  He
is an agnostic.  His mother has driven him to it,
she is so 'steeped in saints.'

'It's bad enough to be steeped in poets like my
sister,' said Ross, 'but saints!  I never can imagine
how people can stomach all that crowd.  They
bore me stiff.  The only one I like is the chap that
finds lost things.

'St Elian?'

'Fat lot you know about saints, Foxhill,'
remarked my brother politely.

'I know an awful lot; I've not lived with my
mother for nothing,' said Charlie lugubriously.

'Well, I never could see that a saint was anything
more than a dead sinner,' remarked my brother,
'and some of them make a perfect nuisance of
themselves—look at St Vitus.'

'Oh,' I giggled, but my brother was wound up
and ignored my interruption.

'And St Swithin—isn't he the absolute limit?
Look how he mucks the summer up if he gets the
chance!  All because he thought he was going to
be buried where he didn't want to be—keeping
the feud up all these years, too.'

Charlie admires my friend Monica awfully and
calls her a Greek poem because she is so graceful,
but Ross says that it is a pity she suffers from
pride of race and spends her time in looking up
people's pedigrees.  Her brother is the Master of
Rullerton.  Daddy asked her once if she had ever
looked up the pedigree of the Master of the Universe,
as He was a gentleman on his mother's side, and
daddy showed her a funny old book where it said,
'He might, if He had esteemed of the vayne glorye
of this world, have borne coat armour.'

That took Monica's fancy frightfully.  She said
it made Him seem quite interesting.  Aunt Amelia
thought it 'shocking,' of course, but daddy said,—

'We don't all travel by the same road, Amelia.'

'There is only one way, and it is narrow,' groaned
my aunt.

'Yes, but not narrow-minded,' daddy retorted.
He is funny.

Though Charlie Foxhill is such a friend of Ross
they are not a bit alike; Charlie is so diffident,
Ross so sure of everything.  But then Charlie has
had one of those unfortunate 'Christian upbringings'
that daddy calls only another name for spiritual
slavery, when square parents try to shove their
round children into square holes, and of course
the children hate it and some of them go to the
devil in the process.  Mrs Foxhill actually insists
on reading all her children's letters, and expects
them to think and feel just as she does about
everything.

But Charlie won't be put into his parents' mould,
he refuses to be shoved into their square hole, he
utterly declines to be steeped in saints.  If he
differs from his mother on any subject he is answered
with a mass of words and arguments, reproaches,
or worse still, tears; consequently Charlie says
nothing now and veils all he really feels in a cloak
of absurdities or feigned indifference.

At first we couldn't get him to give an opinion
about anything, especially in front of father, but
gradually as he got to know us better and found
that Ross expressed his views quite freely and that
daddy treated them with respect and consideration,
even if they were diametrically opposed to his own,
Charlie began gradually to develop and say what he
really thought, but always with a certain diffidence
as if he half expected a storm of opposition.  But
he is always courteous about his mother—'steeped
in saints' is the only criticism he ever makes.
For the rest he is silent and suppressed, but the
cold politeness with which he treats his people
is quite different from the deference Ross pays to
daddy.

Monica, too, is not a bit like me.  I always know
exactly what I want; she never does—till
afterwards.  Father says, however, that Monica will
be a fine character when she learns that a man
can be all the things that really matter, even if he
never had a grandfather, and that she will rise to
the occasion some day and do the splendid thing
even if she doesn't always know whether she wants
to play tennis with Ross or Charlie.





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.. _`CHAPTER VI`:

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   CHAPTER VI

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When I was sixteen my governess got married and
daddy said it was a good opportunity for me to
go to school for a bit.  I was therefore sent to the
one in London where Monica was.  The head
mistress was a friend of Aunt Amelia.  I
suppose that's why my prickles were always out
and my old Adam gave me such a lot of
trouble.

There was that last unfortunate Sunday, for
instance.  It was the 27th April, and Monica and
I awoke at four o'clock.  We peeped out of the
bedroom window just as the dawn was coming.
The London garden had all the glamour of the
woods at home, and there in the half light we
could see the six or seven trees with bluebells
growing round—a mist of blue, enchanting,
adorable, divine.  The scent blew across the grass
and the birds called us.  We slipped downstairs
and ran over the delicious cool lawn into that
lovely blue light at the foot of the trees.  We
gathered handfuls of blossoms and ferns all drowned
with dew.  We went quite mad with the call of
the spring, and danced, for I thought I heard
distant music.  It may have been only a
blackbird; could it have been the pipes of Pan?
Anything was possible that morning.  We got back,
as we thought unseen, stole some scones and milk,
and as we tumbled into bed again Monica swore
she heard the cuckoo, but I'm certain it was only
the clock on the stairs, because this 'Bird' ooed
before it cucked!

Then the same day I behaved badly in church.
Of course, the general behaviour of the sons and
daughters of the clergy is always more unseemly
than that of other people's children.  Daddy says
it's because they're so frightfully handicapped in
having the clergy for their fathers.

But that day two such absurd things happened.
I believe even St Paul with his love of decency
and order would have been obliged to smile, while
Peter, of course, would have giggled.  Monica
passed me a bit of paper shortly after we
arrived, on which was written the mystic message:
'Eyes right.  Psalm 57, verse 5.  She will
remember.'  I looked to the right, and seated in
the pew immediately in front of us was a spinster
of uncertain age in a smart blue toque, in the
hollow crown of which lay a complete set of false
teeth with an unholy smile still lingering about
them.  I suppose the poor dear had put them on
her hat to remind her to put them in her mouth.
I collapsed into weak giggles, which increased
when I looked up the Psalm we were about to
sing, which contained the verse: 'Whose teeth
are spears and arrows.'  I am afraid I must confess
I didn't attempt to follow the service, I simply
lived for verse 5.  Sure enough, as Monica had
predicted, 'she remembered.'  She was singing
away lustily, 'And I lie even among the children
of men that are set on fire whose——' then a
violent start, a wild clutch at the toque, and a
dash down the aisle.  The churchwarden, who
thought she was ill, followed her into the porch
with a glass of water.

I could see Monica's shoulders shaking though
her face was preternaturally solemn.  I felt quite
ill with suppressed laughter.  I tried to remember
all the things I had been taught to think about in
church, but I was in that weak state I couldn't
stop giggling.  The next Psalm began with the
question: 'Are your minds set upon righteousness,
O ye congregation.'  I felt neither Monica nor I
could answer in the affirmative.

After a while my eyes stopped running and I
was able to attend a little better.  Then we had
the second lesson.  It was Acts xxvii, all about
the shipwreck of St Paul.  I noticed poor old Admiral
Stopford, who is a bit weak in the head, was getting
very fidgety.  His nurse whispered to him once or
twice, but in vain, for when the vicar read how
they cast the cargo over to lighten the ship he
suddenly got up and said loudly,—

'Never ought to have been necessary, bad
navigation, bad navigation.'

His nurse hurried him out, purple in the face,
and Monica and I followed.  I felt if I couldn't
laugh aloud I should spontaneously combust.  We
found a flat tombstone in a secluded part of the
churchyard on which we sat and rocked.

On arriving back at the house there was a most
frightful row because one of the neighbours had
telephoned to say that he had seen us in the garden
in the early morning.  The head mistress said we
had brought disgrace on the school and that I was
the chief offender.  She telegraphed to father,—

'Seriously worried about your daughter come
the first thing on Monday.'

Daddy was frantic and thought that I was dying,
and wired to Ross at Harrow to go to Hampstead
at once, and that he would come up by the first
train he could catch.

Ross was out, so he only got to the school half
an hour before father.  Meantime Aunt Amelia
had been sent for, and I was in the head mistress's
room being rowed when Ross was announced.  He
looked quite old as he came in and said, 'Is my
sister still alive?'

He was so relieved when he saw me that he was
just going to kiss me, but Aunt Amelia stopped
him and said he'd better not.

'Have you got *another* cold?' he asked, 'but
I'm not afraid of germs.'

Ross wouldn't sit down because I wasn't allowed
to.  I felt like a prisoner at the bar while he was
told all my crimes from the beginning of time to
'this last disgraceful episode which could not be
passed over.'

Ross could not see their point of view at all.
When she told him about the scones he exclaimed,

'But if my sister was hungry surely——?' and she
said, 'But is that any reason why your sister
should leave the house in the middle of the night?'
and Aunt Amelia remarked she did not know
what my dear dead mother would say if she could
know it.

My quick hurt then!  I know it's awfully
weak-minded to cry when you're in a row, but I couldn't
stand that bit about mother.  Ross seemed to
get suddenly about seven feet high and his face
went like a granite sphinx, and he put his arm
round me and said, 'There darling,' several times.

'Oh, Ross,' I sobbed, 'I never left the house at all,
I only ran out into the garden.'

'Of course, darling.'

'And it wasn't the middle of the night either,
Ross, it was four o'clock in the morning.'

And he agreed that it was *quite* different.

When daddy came the Mistress regretted that I
would have to be expelled, but she trusted that a
father's care and watchful eye were all I needed.
She hoped and believed I had no vice.

I cried some more against father's sleeve then,
because Ross had said once that people were only
expelled for really rotten things,—

'It was the bluebells, daddy.'

'Of course it was, darling,' he said, 'but they're
heaps bigger in Devonshire.'

'That child is on the road to ruin,' groaned my
aunt.

Father said to Ross in the cab that crabbed age
and youth never could live together, and that
woman was enough to make an Evangelical parson
turn Papist.

But something happened while I was at school
that I can't forget.  We were allowed occasionally
to go to Evensong, and once in the dimness of the
church I saw a man gazing at me.  He looked
like a soldier in the Indian army—not a bit
handsome, but he had a certain rugged strength that
made his face seem rather splendid.  The keen,
clear eyes were gray and stern, but softened
as they looked at me.  I felt as if I knew
him.  I have often thought since of that 'absent
face that fixed me,' and I find myself comparing
other men with him, and somehow, I can't explain
it very well, I think I feel a little older since I saw
him.





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.. _`CHAPTER VII`:

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   CHAPTER VII

.. vspace:: 2

Oh, it was topping to get home.  Nannie said I
was most frightfully thin.  She seemed quite
worried about it, but the cook said consolingly,—

'Oh, we all ebbs and flows, especially gals.  She
only wants the crip o' the crame and an egg beat
up in a drop of good milk.'

The next day I woke up with a spot on my chest,
and Nannie said I was feverish, and daddy got in
a panic and sent for Doctor Merriwater.  His
name is Tobias, but we always call him Toby.
When he came he looked at my spot most earnestly
and said,—

'Why, good gracious, the child has got the
measles, the one and only measle, she's in a frightfully
dangerous state.  Don't let her get up for at
least two days and I'll send you round a collar
and a chain at once or I'm afraid her measle will
be gone before the morning.'

When I was better I asked father if I could be
presented, as I had left school, and Monica was
going to be.

'No,' he said, 'I've had quite enough of London
for you for the moment.'

'Oh, daddy, why not?'

Father turned autocratic then and said, 'Because
I don't choose, darling.'  So, of course, I couldn't
say any more.

But after a minute he twinkled at me,—

'Sorry, little 'un, but a parson has to "rule his
children!"  It's one of Timothy's conditions.'

'Oh, that was deacons, daddy! and you're a vicar.'

'Or if "a man desires the office of a bishop," Meg.'

'But *do* you, father?' I asked gravely, 'for if
you don't you haven't got a leg to stand on, and
I——'

'No, I don't desire the office of a bishop, Meg;
I don't want to do anything different from what
I am doing now.  I don't, I don't.'

'Why, father,' I exclaimed, 'does anybody
want you to?'

'I loathe natives,' he replied, and went out of
the room hurriedly.

Sometimes I don't understand my father; he
says things that don't seem to have the slightest
bearing on the subject under discussion.

When Ross came home in the summer for the
holidays he was bigger than ever.  I had the
greatest difficulty in keeping him in his place.
He seemed to think he could go straight on from
that moment when he went seven feet high and
said, 'There, darling.'  He actually had the cheek
to say, 'Because I don't choose' to me once, and
we had words about it!

Aunt Amelia invited herself to stay for six
weeks while he was home.  Relations were slightly
strained all the time and when she said to father
in front of Ross, 'I hope Meg has been quite steady
since.'  I really thought they were both going to
blow up, but we escaped with a slammed door and
father's threat to go into lodgings.

Ross calmed down later in the day and observed
that 'It was a quaint family, all cracked on
something: Aunt Amelia on Calvinism, Uncle Jasper
on Archæology, Cousin Emily on animals, and
you,' he added rudely, 'on—er bluebells.'

'And daddy?' I asked, ignoring the insult.

'Oh, daddy's passion is souls,' and he changed
the conversation quickly.  But I was never so
horrified in all my life.  To think that my brother
should compare father with Aunt Amelia.

'Souls,' I gasped, 'whatever do you mean?  Are
you *ab-so-lu-tely* dotty, Ross?'

'You never *can* see anything farther than your
nose, Meg.  What do you suppose he said he
was going to change the kids' service for that
Sunday?'

For 'that Sunday' was the one that comes once a
month, when the village children have to go to
church, to say the catechism to father, instead of
having Sunday school.  He said at lunch if we had
no other engagements he'd be most awfully obliged
if Aunt Amelia and I would go and help keep
the kids quiet as several of the teachers were
away.

Aunt Amelia observed that she never had
engagements on Sunday (she is tiring), and of
course I said I would go, though privately I thought
it was a sin and a shame to spend that gorgeous
afternoon in learning what your godfathers and
godmothers did for you.  Ours never did anything
for us, except to send us ten bob at Christmas,
though Ross's godmother says she is going to
leave him all her money and me her diamonds.

It was so hot in church, and the children were so
naughty.  The small boy next to me was a little
devil.  His name was Tommy Vellacott.  He had
a picture in his Prayer Book and he would keep
sticking pins in it.  Father stopped once and asked
what he was doing.

'Pwicking holes in the Virgin Mawry,' he said,
and all the children tittered.  Daddy started the
Catechism again and said to Tommy,—

'What is thy duty towards God?'

Tommy looked bored but replied that his duty
was to believe in Him, to fear Him, and to love Him.'

Father seemed to think it was a heaven-sent
opportunity to point a practical moral, so remarked
that if children really loved God, they ought not
to bring a dead mouse in church to frighten the
others with, and that if Tommy were sorry he had
better put it in the porch.  (That's the worst of
father, he isn't satisfied with repentance; you have
to burn the vanities as well).

'Don't love God,' said Tommy.

Father stared down at the little heathen with a
startled look on his face.

'You don't love God, Tommy?'

'No,' said Tommy, who is nothing if not truthful,
'course I don't, only believe in Him.'

I thought it was the most humorous thing I
had ever heard, but Aunt Amelia was horrified,
and at tea said that the present generation was
hopeless and that Tommy's remark was a specimen
of the apostasy of the age.

'Well, I belong to the church militant, Amelia,
so I'm not willing to leave it at that,' said daddy,
rather as if he were trying to keep his temper.
So I, by way of pouring oil on the troubled waters,
said,—

'But, daddy, don't most people feel like Tommy?
They "believe," but I think it's most frightfully
difficult to love the Man of Sorrows.'

Father looked at me with much the same
expression as he had when he looked at Tommy,
but he only said gently,—

'Darling, I don't think you will love the
Man of Sorrows until you've become acquainted
with grief yourself.'

I felt a pig for the rest of the day; it seemed
such a rotten thing to have said to father.

The next time the kids had to go to church
father said he was going to chuck the catechism
and tell them stories instead, and let them choose
their own hymns.

Aunt Amelia (who was still staying with us for
our sins) observed that nothing was gained by
leaving the old paths; and then father made
another of those extraordinary remarks that don't
seem to have the slightest connection with the
rest of the conversation.

'"A Hindoo, though dying of thirst, will refuse
water if offered in a foreign cup, but he will drink
the *same* water if offered in his own."'

When daddy got into church he said to the kids,—

'It's much too hot to stay indoors this lovely
day, we'll all go out and sit in the shade in the
meadow.'

The children were frightfully bucked, and when
they were all seated daddy said,—

'Now, somebody choose a hymn.'

Tommy Vellacott said he would like the one
about the little boy who stole the old gentleman's
watch.  Father, with great difficulty, discovered
that he meant

   |  'The old man, meek and mild.
   |  The Priest of Israel slept.
   |  *His watch* the Temple child
   |  The little Levite *kept*.'
   |

I could feel Aunt Amelia's expression down my
backbone.

Then daddy said,—

'Now, children, I will tell you a story.'

'A Sunday one?' asked Tommy, and when father
said, 'Oh, yes, certainly,' he appeared to be about
to take no further interest in the proceedings.

Father has a beautiful voice for story telling.
He seems to fill it at will with fun and laughter,
magic, mystery, tenderness, and tears.  I wish I
could put down on paper its beautiful tone and
quality and show you the gentle softening of his
strong face as he watched the little children sitting
so contentedly in the meadow, listening to his tale.

Always after that daddy told them the old
stories in a new way and the children were so
interested and liked to choose the hymns.  (They
loved the ones for the burial of the dead).  One
day Tommy Vellacott sent daddy this note,—


'Please Mother says i can't go to church this
afternoon and nor can emily she give me a green
apple and i have got the dire rear and so has she
so will you come to our house and tell us a story
please your respectful tommy.'


And after the children's service, when daddy went
down the village to see his two sick parishioners
he had on his 'contented look,' as if what Ross calls
his 'passion for souls' was somehow being satisfied
by Tommy's desire to hear a Bible story.  He is
so dear and funny.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER VIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII

.. vspace:: 2

When Ross went to Sandhurst I got influenza,
and then when I was better I got it again.  Toby
was very angry and said if I were going to turn
into a trap for that bug he'd chuck up his
profession and take in the village washing.  By the
time I had recovered the second time it was nearly
Christmas, and Aunt Constance went to London,
and I invited myself to lunch with Uncle Jasper
on my seventeenth birthday, and oh! why I've got
up to Chapter I again....  So the General Public
can behold me now quite grown up, staid, and in
my right mind, having been baptized, confirmed,
and had the measles.  But whatever else can I
put in my novel?  A little while after this I asked
Uncle Jasper.

'Why, darling,' he said, 'I thought you just
made it up as you went along.'

'But could you seriously advise me?' I ventured.

So he remarked that all the chapters must be
about the same length and must be linked together
by a strong plot, 'The General Public likes strong
meat,' he said, and he looked at me and then across
at father, and they laughed and telegraphed things
to one another.

Nannie is the only person who really helps me.
She said,—

'Why, you haven't got anything in yet about
the old church, dearie, and after that I should
write a chapter every day about what you do.'

'But the chapters won't be all the same length then.'

'I shouldn't worry about a thing like that,' said
Nannie with her usual homely common sense,
'because even the General Public knows that
some days are much longer than others.  Why
the calendar marks the longest and the shortest,
doesn't it.'

'Yes,' I said doubtfully.

'Well, then!' said Nannie.

So I *will* tell about the old church and "marey
Falkner's" chemise.

Archæologists say that our church is 'a perfect
gem.' The walls are very thick, nearly three feet
in some places, and the axe marks are still visible.
The nave and chancel are about 1100.  There is
a Norman priest's door on the south side of the
church and a perfect Norman arch, dividing the
nave from the chancel.  There are *two* of the
consecration crosses still remaining, and some bits
of Saxon work.

There is no tower, but a little shingled wood
turret with two bells, one of which is cracked.
The pulpit and the canopy over it are 1628, and
there are some splendid ancient candlesticks of
brass.  The church has small Norman lights mixed
up with early English ones, and the pews are all
old oak.

Uncle Jasper is simply absorbed in the history
of the little place, and one day he showed me the
deeds and some of the old Churchwarden accounts.
I will copy out the one I like best, although he
says it is not sufficiently 'early' to be really
interesting.

.. vspace:: 1

::

   'ACCOMPT FOR YE YEAR 1685.

                                         £   s.  d.
   Received from ye ffor: Churchwarden   00  10  02
   Reed ffrom ye psh on Two Rates ..     01  17  03
                                         ----------
                      Totall Received    02  07  05
                                         ----------
   to ye house of Correction  .. ..      00  12  04
   Ffor Bread and wine & at ye Comm      00  07  06
   ffor necessarie Repaire of ye Church  00  15  07
   ffor Releiving poor passengers   ..   00  02  06
                                         ----------
                             Payd out    01  17  11
   Rests due to ye psh        .. ..      00  09  06
   These Accompts were examin'd and Allowe'd by us
   FRED SLOCOMBE      ROB COCKRAN
   WILLIAM COPP       ALLIN VELLACOTT

.. vspace:: 2

I'm sure they had an awful bother to make the
accounts balance, they must have got so muddled
with all those noughts, especially Rob Cockran.
I suppose Tommy Vellacott is a descendant of
Allin's, and I've just remembered that there is an
old woman who lives at the last house in the village
and her name is Slocombe.  She is thrice widowed
and exceedingly rotund.  She says she has only
the Almighty to look after her now, and that all
her troubles went innards and turned to fat.  She
has varicose veins.  These things do link one up
with the centuries.

(Father has just looked over my shoulder and
says that really, 'after all the money that has been
spent on my education!'  But I don't know what
he means.  I'm certain varicose is spelled correctly,
for I looked it up in the dictionary.)

It seems that some land and some money were
given to the church by William the First 'for the
health of his soul.'  (Perhaps he'd been beastly to
Matilda of Flanders and gave it as a kind of
penance.)  Father says, 'Oh, no.  Probably it was a
thank-offering when she died.'

'But,' I said, '*did* she die first?'  Father remarked
that he thought she shuffled off this mortal coil
in 1084, but that he couldn't bother to remember
an unimportant little detail like that about a
woman!

Apparently it was quite a nice bit of land, sufficiently
large and fertile to supply pasture for '80
romping, roaming, and rollicking swine.'

Some of the things the tenants had to do were
very quaint.  How would the village people like
daddy to come down on them now to 'dam the
water to overflow the meadows once a year,' and
if they didn't do it make them pay a halfpenny?
Or supposing they got a message that they had
'to fill two dung carts every two days or pay
twopence,' or 'thresh and winnow white wheat,'
and for every two bushels that they didn't do
have to pay 'somewhere about three farthings.'

But the thing that fascinates me so is the entry
in the accounts about marey Falkner's chemise.
I'll copy it out:—

.. vspace:: 1

::

   1792—to pare shoes for Marey Falkner ..  4  6
   To shift 16d Ell for marey Falkner    ..  2  8
   Two pare stockens 16d      Do.        ..  1  4
   To Handkerchief 14d.       Do.        ..  1  2
   Paid for maken Shift       ..    ..   ..     6
   and then
   1793 for menden marey Falkners shoes      1  6

.. vspace:: 2

Oh, she must have been a proud girl when she
got that outfit!  But I hope the churchwarden's
wife gave her the shift: it seems an embarrassing
present to receive from an Evangelical churchwarden.
I wonder if there was a ribbon round
the top of it, and wasn't she a good girl to make
her shoes last out so long?  I do hope there was a
ribbon.  I've always had such heaps of them; the
distribution of life's trimmings is very unequal;
poor little marey Falkner.

The account goes on to say that Dame Crane
received two and six for nursing John Insgridle,
but they paid Dame Hollice 8/0 for nursing Snellings'
wife, which seemed dear, unless there was a baby.
H. Delva had to be examined and 'hors and cart
to take her thare' cost six bob, which was a lot, I
think.  Then the churchwardens seem to have
bought a lock for the church wicket and one
Hedgehog, and paid four shillings for a hat for
Richard Helsey.  They procured a Polcat and
a Stote and a mat for the 'Cumionion for the
minister' and then got another Hedgehog and
'releived a porper' (doesn't it look poverty-struck
spelled that way?  I always told father
that was the right way to spell relieved), and they
finished up with seventy-two dozen Sparrows at
three pence a dozen.  Whatever did they do with
such a Zoo?

But the thing I like best of all in the church is
the record of a naughty boy who evidently behaved
as disgracefully in the seventeenth century as my
brother does in the twentieth, for very badly
carved in the chancel near our seat is

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center
 
   \R. Fotheringham.  1660.

.. vspace:: 1

There is a monument, too, to a Margaret Fotheringham
on the opposite wall.  She died young.  I am
so glad she did, for I have always loathed her,
because Aunt Amelia used to tell me I ought to
try to follow her good example.  There is a long
list of her virtues, and then it says:—

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   'This monument was erected by her afflicted
   father who, when he looks upon this place,
   knows that he gazes on an angel's tomb.'

.. vspace:: 2

But then, as Ross used to say when we were
seven and I was extra specially fed up with my
angelic ancestress, 'I don't suppose she really was
as good and holy as all that, Meg, all men are liars;
it says so in the Bible.'

Monica once said I ought to be proud of such
ancient lineage, but I don't see why.  We all go
back to Adam.

'Yes,' said Monica, tilting up her chin, 'but it
isn't every one that has written down how they
did it.'

Of course I *do* see that these things *do* link one
up to one's family.

'Just as varicose veins do to the centuries, little
'un,' father laughed, but he didn't condescend to
explain what he meant.  He is sometimes intentionally
ambiguous.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER IX`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX

.. vspace:: 2

I fainted the day before yesterday, and I feel
anxious about my health.  I have been since I
had the 'flu twice last winter.  They say the after
effects are worse than the disease.  I have delusions:
I find centipedes in my sponge.  There was another
yesterday, and I felt my condition was getting
serious, so I spoke to Ross about it.

'Lawks, got 'em *again*,' he said, 'would you like
a gun to shoot 'em with?'

I mentioned it to father, but, he, too, seemed to
think I only thought I saw them.  I went
downstairs and found him mending a riding-whip.

'Do you ever see centipedes walking out of your
sponge, father?'

'Never, I'm thankful to say,' he replied, dropping
the whip suddenly and looking at me anxiously.
'But, Meg, what other symptoms have you?  Does
your head ache?  Do you vomit?  Does everything
revolve?  How many fingers am I holding up?
Am I ever twins?'

'Do be serious, father.'

'I am,' he replied, trying to feel my pulse; 'I
think it's frightfully serious.  I shall get Toby to
see you to-day and take you up to a specialist
to-morrow.  I understand it's frightfully on the
increase amongst women.'

Well, I have heard of people with an *idee fixé*,
and if there is such a thing as an insect fixe I must
have it, and pretty badly, too, for another dropped
out just before lunch when I was going to wash
my face.

Nannie came in then and said, 'Dearie, why don't
you keep your sponge on the top of your water jug
instead of by the window; that's the fourth
centipede I've found in your basin this week.'

She is a comfort.

But to-day I had another kind of delusion, for
I went out alone in Uncle Jasper's woods to gather
early primroses.  It was in the dusk, just when
the woods were growing dark and filled with mystery.
But I'm not frightened now, for ever since I saw
that man in church I love to go out in that gloaming
time and let the 'longing that is not akin to pain'
steal over me.

And then I saw him coming down the little path,
and when he drew quite near he saw me, too, and
a startled look came in his eyes and a great wonder.
He stopped a moment and it seemed as if he half
held out his hands to me.

And I?  I don't know what I felt save that it
seemed again as if I had met some one I had *known*
before.  I dropped my flowers and ran home with
my heart beating.  But I knew, of course, he did
not *really* stop.  I *must* have dreamed the startled
wonder of his face, that look of sudden adoration
in his eyes.

Father met me at the entrance of the Park.

'Why, darling! were you frightened in the woods?'

'No,' I said, but I clung to his arm, and he turned
autocratic then, and in his funny way forgot that
I am grown up now, and forbade me to go out
alone so late, because he thought that I had had
a sudden fright such as I had when I was little,
and the woods grew tulgy, and the trees turned to
fantastic shapes, and strange things rustled in the
undergrowth.

Then daddy told me a most amazing piece of
news.  There has been a family row at the Manor
House, the first I ever remember.

Eustace told his father that he didn't want to
go into the army after all, but that he wished to
join the Roman church and be a monk instead.
Imagine that bombshell in an Evangelical parish.
Mercifully Aunt Amelia is not staying here just
now.  Ross's comments are not really printable.
Uncle Jasper came over to see father about it in
a towering temper just before dinner.  I don't
know what daddy said to him, but I was in the
garden when he went away and I heard him say,—

'Yes, Anthony, I promise, at least, that it shan't
be you over again.  But I will never consent to it,
never.  A monk!  My son!'

I wonder what that bit about father meant.

Daddy went to dine at the Manor House, so Ross
and I had dinner alone as we weren't asked.  My
brother's mind is full of Monkeries, as he persists
in railing them.

'What a mug Eustace is,' said he.  'Fancy
wanting to give up his dogs and horses.'

'But giving up is very hard.'

'Yes, but it isn't giving up in his case; he was
never keen on horses—thought the Derby wicked.'

'Well, but Ross, you know——'

'Oh, for goodness' sake,' said Ross with great
exasperation, 'don't tell me that you think racing's
wicked, surely *you* don't believe that because
people gamble that the thing itself is wrong; you'll
be going into a Monkery yourself next,' he said,
glaring at me angrily.  'What do you suppose the
horses were made capable of such speed for, if
they weren't to run?  I suppose you think they
ought to be kept in their stables and fed on barley
sugar, and you father's daughter,' said Ross
disgustedly.  'Oh, don't talk to me, Meg; people
like Aunt Amelia and Eustace make me sick.
They just stick up a little set of opinions and call it
religion.  They always say the things *they* don't
like are wicked; can you see Aunt Amelia ski-ing
or hunting?  Would she exchange that disgusting
fydo for my bulldog?  But because I like those
things they both say that I'm "worldly" and she
calls me her "poor misguided nephew."  No, my
dear girl, it won't wash, that sort of rot does all
the harm.  And then the parsons! with their
everlasting "venture to think."  When a chap in
the pulpit gets up and says, "My brethren, I
venture to think," I always want to heave a hymn
book at him and say, "Oh, don't venture such a lot,
get on with it."  I never venture.  I just think and
say so, why can't he?'

'Yes,' I murmured, 'I'm sure you do, Ross!'

'Look at the stuff they preach, too.  Always
harping on the mild and simple tack!  Who wants
to be mild or simple?  How can they think that
will attract *men*?'

'Or women,' I said as he paused for breath.

'No, or women,' agreed my brother.

'But, Ross, it does say He was meek and gentle.'

'But not mild, that's the hymn, and they only
put it in to rhyme with "child."  I hate hymns,
except "Onward Christian Soldiers," and "Fight
the Good Fight," and decent ones like that.  Why
do parsons nearly always leave out the other side
of Him?  Think how strong He was, and strong
people are always gentle.  Look at daddy.  Could
you have a stronger man, mentally, morally, or
physically, and yet he is most extraordinarily
gentle sometimes; meek, too, about some things.
I wish I was!'

'I were, Ross.'

'Oh, no! you weren't, *never* Meg.  I will not be
reproved for grammar by a twin.  Oh, yes, you
were meek once, about some bluebells.  You're
rather a sweet kid sometimes; I mean you used to
be,' my brother corrected hastily, lest I should be
puffed up with pride.

'Now, if *I* went into a Monkery,' he continued,
being thoroughly wound up, 'it might be a good
thing.  It would be discipline for me.  I should
never be able to say prayers all day.  I'd always be
falling foul over the law of obedience, and if there
were a dog fight outside I'd have to go and separate
them.  It would take me years to get to what
Eustace is now and—oh these nuts have got bugs in
them, pass me an apple.'

When I went to bed and thought over what Ross
had said I remembered that once when we were
children, he and I and Eustace were taken round
the National Gallery by Aunt Constance, and Ross
came up to me privately and said 'Meg, I can't
stand all these saints and Madonnas, and the
paintings of Him are beastly, why, they're only
women with beards.  They're not a bit like the
picture of Him that's in my head,' said the little
chap with a proud tilt to his chin.

'What's your picture of Him like, Ross?' I
remember asking.

'On a horse, of course, with a sword and crown
like it tells you in the Revelation.'

And then, for that masculine English horror of
'talking religion' was developed strongly in him
even at that early age, he wouldn't say any more,
only, 'Let's come and see if we can find some
lions!'

When daddy came in to wish me 'good-night'
he said that Uncle Jasper was still in a most frightful
bate with Eustace about 'this idea that he has
got into his head,' and that Eustace has agreed
to wait a year or two before chucking up the army.

I can't understand my cousin.  Last time I saw
him his young man's fancy had lightly turned to
thoughts of loving me.  Now he desires a Monkery.
But which is 'the idea'? that's the question that
I felt would keep me awake all night.  Has he
really a vocation?  If so, I suppose I was merely
a kind of centipede that got, for a moment, into
his sponge.  Time alone will give the answer.

But, oh dear me, I didn't keep awake all night.
I only wish I had.  Instead, I had a most appalling
nightmare.  I dreamed that Ross was going into a
nunnery.  He would do it, in spite of all I said to
him.  I found myself in the passage in floods of
tears, hammering on his door and sobbing, 'Oh,
don't, don't.  Think of the privations.'

The next moment I was on my own bed with
Ross and father beside me.

'Am I dying?' I asked, seeing my family gathered
round my couch.

'Dying!' said my brother, giving me a shake
with one hand and a stick of chocolate with the
other, 'it's we who are dying, with laughter.'

'I thought you were going into a nunnery,' I
wailed, 'and——'

'And very nice too,' said Ross, 'if I had a nice
little nun to cuddle.'

That woke me right up.  I don't know how my
brother can say such things!  Father says that
really some of the family jokes *can't* go in my novel.
But I can scratch them out after.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER X`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X

.. vspace:: 2

It's a whole month since I wrote a chapter of
my book.  I don't seem to have had much time
lately, although I know we all have all the time
there is, as the Bishop reminded the lady who
complained that she had not had enough in which
to say her prayers!

And now it is full spring and the woods are a
pageant of flowers, and there is a glory of green
over the garden.  It is warm like summer and the
nights are still, and that wondrous thing called
'Love' has come to me.

I wish that I could get its fragrance down and
put into my book something of its perfection.

My father twinkles at me and says that although
I have got in William I., and 'the strong love interest'
has turned up, William II. and the fauna of the
South Pole have still to be inserted.

I think it's difficult to write of love, but Nannie
says,—

'Oh, no.  Just tell about the time you saw him
first, and what he said to you, and you to him.'

But that first time, in church, he only looked at
me, and the second time, out in the woods, I ran
away!  But two days after that, Aunt Constance
had a dinner party, and the Foxhills came, and
with them—Michael.  I saw that same glow of
adoration on his face, and I was afraid to let him
see my eyes lest he should catch an answering look
in them.

After dinner I slipped away into the Great Hall
alone.

He followed me and said,—

'The garden is very sweet to-night, won't
you come out with me?'

It seemed as if he had the right to ask that
I should go, and I the right to go since he had
asked it.

Out in the warm, sweet night he told me a little
of his life in India—of the loneliness of his frontier
station, but the splendour of it, too.  I caught the
lure and glamour of the mountains he loved to
climb with two faithful guides who went out to
him from Switzerland year after year whenever he
had leave.  I guessed a little of the strenuous
simplicity of the life of this man whose face had
'fixed me.'

And then there came a little silence which he
broke by telling me that once in a London church
he had seen 'a girl's face like a cameo, cut in
the grayness of the wall behind.'

'I loved you then,' he said, 'I loved you in the
woods that day—I love you now.'

And I? what did I do and say?  Oh, what
would any woman—out in the warm darkness
with a man she'd hardly spoken to before?  I
chose to forget that moment in the woods when all
my heart went out to him.  I selected my words
with daintiness and my sentences with care, and
built up little barriers of aloofness all around me.
I said that 'I must go in now, but that I had been
so interested in all he'd told me of his life in India,
that I would think of him sometimes climbing his
mountains.'  And as I turned to go out of the
garden I added airily, 'Write?  Oh, yes, perhaps I
might even write occasionally.  I liked writing to
my friends.  When he came home again in three
years' time on leave we might even meet again.
Perhaps—perhaps——'

But there were primal instincts at work that
night out in the scented garden, and this
gentleman, in conventional evening dress, suddenly
reverted to the caveman who had seen his woman
and quite definitely meant to have her.  So with
a certain ruthlessness that I discovered afterwards
was typical of the man, he refused to let me go,
but stormed the fortress of my heart with most
exceeding suddenness.  He brushed aside all my
objections and the words and sentences chosen
with such care, knocked down my carefully erected
barriers and swept me off my feet, and swamped
and drowned and deluged me in love, and with
'What does all that matter?  You belong to me,'
he took me in his arms and kissed me with a kiss
that thrilled while it subdued me.

It seemed as if I had been with him in some dim,
past age and then had somehow lost him, and had
been restless ever since, striving to find what I had
lost, and yet had been unconscious of the thing I
sought until I found it, in a moment, in his arms.

As father and I went home I spoke to him with
subtlety and with guile.

'Daddy, how old was mother when you married her?'

'Eighteen.  Why, darling?'

'Just my age now.'

'Oh, nonsense, Meg, I quite decline to have a
grown up daughter, you're only eight!'

'Have you ever felt it was too young for her to
marry.'

'Never,' said father with great vigour, 'it was just
the right age.'

'Do you believe in love at first sight, daddy?'

'Why, yes, I think I do in some cases.  I loved
your mother the moment I saw her, and then
there's your friend Dante, little 'un, and——'

'Then, father, may I marry Captain Ellsley,
please?'

But my father was not consistent, neither was
he humble.  He behaved like a man who not
only desired the office of a Bishop, but was
actually a whole bench of them at that moment,
and intended therefore to 'have his children in
subjection with all gravity.'  He said he'd never
in all his life heard anything quite so preposterous,
he'd hardly seen the hulking chap (we do not see
ourselves as others see us.  Michael is an inch and
a half shorter than father), never even noticed if
he ate with his knife or not, so was it likely that——'

'But, father, Dante——'

'Yes, but he didn't marry the girl, as you've
often said, Meg.'

Thus did I fall into my own pit, and in the net
which I had spread for another were my own feet
taken.  The Bench of Bishops preferred not to
discuss the subject further, so I went upstairs to
bed in utter desolation, because I couldn't give
up Michael even though father was so displeased
with me.

But when he came upstairs ages afterwards he
scratched on my door and said,—

'Are you Meg?'

'Oh, daddy, of course I am.'

He came in then.  'How many?' he asked.

'Four.'

'Oh, darling! never in all the years do I
remember any tragedy that took more than three,
even when you were so worried about "Adam-and-Eve's"
family!'

He was sweet to me then, and took away my four
little wet handkerchiefs and gave me his big dry
one, and gathered me in his arms and said,—

'We can't have two rows in one family, Meg.
Tell me about it, darling.'

So I told him.

'Oh, Meg,' he said when I had done, 'so love,
that very perfect thing, has really come to you, my
little girl, but, oh, why do you choose a man who
will want to take you away to India, my darling?'

And then father made one of those strange
remarks that he does sometimes which I can't
understand.

'My harness piece by piece He has hewn from me.'

'What *do* you mean, daddy.'

'Perhaps I'll tell you some day, little 'un,' and
he sighed and kissed me and said he would at any
rate see Michael in the morning.  So I felt more
cheered.  As he got up to go I thought how wonderful
it is to love, so I said,—

'Daddy, what is it that makes me now understand
all the lovers of the world?  Jacob and
Rachel, Elizabeth and Robert, even Dante——'

'Why, experience, darling,' father said, and
came back and kissed me again, smiling with faint
amusement.

When he'd gone I turned down the lamp and
peeped out of the window and saw that it was
moonlight.  All the flowers I love so in the
day-time were still waiting in the garden—waiting for
Michael.  In the bright moonlight I could see all
sorts of funny things that I have never seen before.
There was a little elf in the laburnum tree making
yellow tassels, another was stamping out stars
from a bit of cloud and throwing them on to the
clematis, and a third was taking off the bracken's
curl papers.  Just as I was thinking I had better
try to go to sleep, I saw a little old woman with
a face like a rosy, wrinkled apple walking down
the garden path.  She was in a great hurry
and rather cross.

'How people can expect me to make scent,' she
said, 'with no flowers.  Ah, this is better,' and
she looked round the garden with great satisfaction.
'I remember now, this one's always nice.'  Then
she began to gather flowers and somehow I didn't
mind a bit, though usually I should very much
object if some unauthorised person came into the
garden unbidden.  She pulled bits of lilac and a great
deal of honeysuckle, some bluebells, and an armful
of wallflowers, lilies of the valley, and such a lot
of primroses, and threw them into a still, which
I never remember noticing in the garden before.
Then she damped them with dewdrops and threw
in more flowers—daffodils and gorse-blooms (the
thorns didn't prick her fingers, though her
hands were very white and soft.)  Then more
primroses and a few late violets, honeysuckle, and
bluebells.  She added just a wisp of wood smoke,
too, from a bonfire and some damp earth and a
shower of rain, and stirred the mixture with a
sunbeam.  She laughed softly and her voice sounded
like a faint breeze rippling over the tree tops.  Then
she walked, or perhaps she floated, round the
garden, and on every bush and tree she scattered
little showers and sprays of scent, so that I
could smell not just one thing like lilac or
bluebell, but a delicious harmony of flowers, wet
earth, and rain.  She looked up at me as she
went out of the garden and laughed.

'It will last till he comes in the morning.'

And I smiled back because I loved that dear
Dame Nature.  When Nannie came to wake me she
said,—

'How sweet the garden smells.  Hasn't the
laburnum and clematis come out in the night?
I suppose it's the rain, Meg.'

But I knew better!

Then Michael came, prepared, I think, to
interview a Bench of Bishops, but found—my
father—who remarked later in the day,—

'Well, he doesn't eat with his knife, Meg, and
he—um—seems to know his own mind, too.  I don't
think that "gentle knight" would have desired
to go into a Monastery if his ladye had refused
him the first time he asked her.'

Now how on earth did father guess that?

And I smiled to myself as I wondered if 'you
belong to me' could conceivably be considered
by a Bench of Bishops as the speech of a gentle
knight 'asking' his ladye.

When I told Ross that I was going to marry
Captain Ellsley in the summer, he said coldly,—

'Never heard of the chap.'

'But,' I said, 'you must have heard of him,
he's——'

'You don't mean *the* Ellsley; that man that
climbs in the Himalayas?'

'Yes, I do, Ross.'

'My hat,' he exclaimed, 'why he might have
married anybody,' and then he stared at me as if
he had suddenly seen me in quite a new light and
put an arm round me and called me 'Jonathan'
and said,—

'Oh, Meg, I'll have to change into the Indian
Army so that I can murder him if he isn't good
to you!'

Funny old 'David.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI

.. vspace:: 2

Here's more than half the summer slipped away.
The house has buzzed and overflowed with the
boys whom Ross brings home.

Every day for eight whole weeks I have been
out, riding or walking in the Hickley woods,
sometimes with father, many times alone with Michael.

I love this man I'm going to marry very deeply,
but I wouldn't let him know it.  He dislikes 'the
truest form of kindness' even more than all my
other male things do!

Sometimes after a day of delight together he
says as he goes home,—

'I've hardly seen you, darling.'

'Why, I've let you stay *all* day,' I say reproachfully.

'Yes, but I haven't really had you; you've
eluded me.  You drive me mad, Meg, with your
little air of cool aloofness.'

But what would he?  Is a woman to be done
out of her wooing because a man chose once to
be a caveman and talked of things belonging to
him, before he'd even got them?  So naturally I
tilt my chin a little when he talks like that, and
hold out my hand to say good-night, and watch
out of the tail of my eye to see how he is liking
it!  But sometimes it's——'

'No, I won't stand *any* more of it to-night.'
and then follows that mastering kiss which makes
me really his for just that moment, and sends my
thoughts and feelings whirling so that I try the
harder to elude him afterwards!

One day this week I felt unusually romantic,
so I read the Sonnets from the Portuguese.

'Oh, beautiful, Elizabeth,' I said, 'but simple,
when you come to think of it.  I'm sure that I
could write one just as good, and I love my man
every bit as much as you did Robert.'

So here is my Maiden Effort and probably my
Swan Song:—

   |  'At night I think of you, beloved.
   |  Dream that I see your face,
   |  Fancy I feel you kiss me
   |  As I rest in your embrace.
   |  But at the rose glow of morning
   |  You fade like a summer mist,
   |  And I wake, and long
   |  For a dream that has gone,
   |  For a face that I fancied I kissed.'
   |

Of course it is not strictly accurate, for I never
have the luck to dream of Michael, 'but a *Poet*,'
I observed as I wrote the last lines down, 'is not
expected to be verbally truthful in a *Poem*.'

'What, still slinging ink, little 'un?' said father,
coming into my room at this point, 'why, you've
got a blob on your neck!'

And then he picked up this chapter in that
impertinent way he has and read it, with his eyes
all curled up at the corners.

'Might one criticise the poem, Meg?' he asked
diffidently.

'Oh, do,' I replied, conscious that it was beyond
all criticism.

'Your "poem,"' he said, getting the word out
with difficulty, 'has defective rhymes, darling.
"Long" does not rhyme with "gone," nor is
the—um—"poem" a sonnet.'

'But I never said it was, daddy.'

'No, Meg?'

'Oh, father,' I said, shaking his arm, 'it would
look deliriously beautiful printed on good paper
with wide margins and rough edges?'

Nannie said, 'You give it to Master Michael,
dearie.  He'll like it, and as to rhymes, why the
stuff your father reads never has any.'

So I presented it to Michael, and I had no
illusions then as to whether I were kissed or not.

Later, at tea, father had just observed that,
like the Ephesians, we were 'in danger to be called
in question for this day's uproar,' when a telegram
was brought to him.

'The tone of this household will have to buck
up a bit,' he remarked as he read it.

'It will after to-morrow,' grinned Charlie
Foxhill, 'when Meg's gone, sir.'

(For oh, to-morrow is my wedding day, just fancy.)

'It's got to buck up before that,' father replied;
'this wire is from the new Bishop of Ligeria, he's
coming here this afternoon and wants to stop the
night.  He'll have to stay on for the wedding, of
course.'

'Oh, daddy,' I exclaimed in great disgust, 'we
can't have this Ligerian fossil here to-morrow,
it'll spoil everything, besides, there isn't a bed.'

'He'll have to sleep in his suit-case then, and his
chaplain in the lid, Meg; there's no time to put
him off, and *do* try to behave like 'a clergyman's
daughter' while he's here, little 'un!  Why, good
gracious!'

For there was the Bishop of Ligeria, and a livid
kind of chaplain who looked like a limp curl-paper,
alighting at the front door from a motor-car.

Daddy rushed out into the hall and I after him.
I wished I had had time to change into something
black, as father seemed so anxious to make a good
impression on the Bishop, but I managed to part
my hair in the middle by the hall glass and I turned
the collar of my blouse up instead of down.

And then one of those terrible delusions came
over me, for I thought father seized the Bishop
by the hand and shook it violently, exclaiming,—

'Hallo, Porky, what priceless luck.'

'What about that ten bob, old bean?' said Porky.

Then father turned and saw *me* with my hair
parted down the middle, and the *chaplain*, partially
paralysed with horror.

'My daughter, me lud,' he said, and led the
Bishop and his attendant into the drawing-room
for a belated tea.

I got away as soon as I could.  I felt I must
have quiet to think things out.  Is this another
delusion, or did father really call a Bishop 'Porky'?
Nannie said once that putting the feet in hot
water draws the blood from the head and eases
mental strain, so I decided to have a bath before
dinner.

I ran into daddy in the corridor.

'Meg, you've torn the lace on your dressing-gown;
I told you so yesterday.  Why isn't it
mended?'

'Cotton,' I wailed, 'is threepence a reel.'

'Bad as that, Meg?'

'Worse, my honoured parent, worse.'

'Wild oats, Meg?'

'Sacks.'

'Debts?'

I nodded.

'Tell me the uttermost, my erring child.'

'Fourpence to Nannie, and five and threepence
to Ross.'

I escaped into the bathroom and slammed the
door.  I sang a hymn as I bathed; it was that one
the children love so, 'Days and Moments Quickly
Flying.'  I thought it might help to restore the
tone of the household.

Daddy shoved five and sevenpence under the
door with a note to say that a lady in the house
was very ill and would I either sing something
else, or go in the next street, as that hymn made
her nervous, so I chanted (being always anxious
to oblige)—

   |  'Beer, beer, glorious beer,
   |  Drink till you're made of it,
   |  Don't be afraid of it,
   |  Glorious, glorious beer.'
   |

Another note was pushed under the door then
to say that the lady was dead now, and the Bishop
thought it would be well for me to sign the pledge
(enclosed).

The Bishop took me into dinner.  I behaved
just like a clergyman's daughter.

'Sorry,' said Michael, suddenly dropping his
fish fork, 'but I can't, after all.'

'Can't what?'

'Marry the girl, sir.'

'De'ah me,' said the Bishop, 'this is most
distressing, very.'

'What would your ludship advise,' said father,
looking at me hopelessly, 'you see, I can't keep
her here either, for the sake of the parish.'

'There is a home for Decayed Gentlewomen at
Putney,' the Bishop began; 'I should be very
happy if my vote and influence would be of any
help, but I doubt'—he continued surveying me
solemnly—'whether they would take her.  She
is so ah—er—um—so *exceedingly* decayed.'

After dinner the Bishop nodded in the direction
of his chaplain and whispered to me,—

'It sings.  Most painful.  Very.'

So of course I asked it to.  Aunt Constance
accompanied its impassioned wail.

   |  'If I should die
   |        To-night,
   |  My friends would look upon my face
   |        With tears,
   |  And kissing me, lay snow-white flowers against
   |        My hair.
   |  Keep not your kisses for my cold,
   |        Dead face,
   |  But let me feel them
   |        Now.'
   |                      (Unknown author).
   |

Father looked round the congregation with a
cold eye.  He has views about guests.

'Thank you very much, Mr Williams.  Won't
you sing something else?'

And Mr Williams went upstairs to get another.

'Oh,' sobbed Charlie Foxhill, laying his head
down on Ross's shoulder, 'keep not your kisses
for my cold——'

'No one,' my brother giggled, 'can look upon
*your* face *without* tears, old thing, but you shall
have snow-white flowers all right; here, can you
feel them now?' and he shoved a camellia and
several wet carnations down Charlie's collar, and
the Bishop mopped his eyes and remarked in his
best Oxford drawl,—

'Such a good chap, really, if he only wouldn't.
Top-hole, very.'

At nine-thirty father said to Michael, 'You can
go away now.'

'Where, sir.'

'Anywhere you jolly well like so long as it's far
enough.  I'm going to take my only daughter for
a last walk in the woods.  Of course, if you thought
it worth while to be at the park gates at
ten-thirty to say good-night I might——'

'If you could make it twenty to eleven I could
bear it better,' said Michael, 'it would be ten minutes
less——'

'Ten-thirty is *the* very latest, Michael.  An hour
is as much as I can stand of her myself,' said father
firmly, shoving him out into the hall.

'Oh, daddy,' I giggled, as we wandered out into
the summer night, 'I haven't laughed so much
for years.  *Who* is Porky, and why and when did
you bet him ten bob?'

'He was my fag at Eton, Meg, and I bet him ten
bob he'd never be a Bishop.'

'Have you paid him yet?'

'I've given him six and tenpence on account,
little 'un.  Why, he's only a colonial.'

'Oh, daddy! you really are a poppet; you're
much too nice to be a parson; whatever made you
want to go into the Church?'

'I didn't want to, Meg.  He made me.'

'What, that man, the Bishop of Ligeria?'

'No, *The Man*, the Bishop of my soul, darling.'

'Oh, father!'

'Didn't you know that I was once going into the
army, Meg?  It seemed to me then, as now, the
only conceivable thing to do, as the Fotheringhams
have always been soldiers.  But I found that HE
had other views about it, and I had to chuck it up
at the last minute.  My father was so furious with
me that he chucked me out.'

'Oh, daddy!'

'And I have felt lately that there is something
else I am required to do, and I don't want to do it.
Sometimes I think that this pleasant Devonshire
life is not the one to which I am to be allowed to
'settle down.'

'And yet you like Him, father?'

'And yet I "like Him," Meg, but, oh, I really
don't think I can let you be married in the morning.
I shall have to get Porky to say the bit of the
service that really matters, for I shall be tempted
to leave it out.'

And although father laughed as he said it, yet,
from the struggle in his face, I seemed to
understand suddenly that my marriage was for him
only another 'bit of harness' which had been
'hewn' away.  But why?'

Then Michael met me at the gate at half-past ten.

'There's a little cottage high up on a Cornish
cliff, Meg.'

'How interesting,' I said.

'It's rather a sweet place for a day or two.'

'Oh, really?'

'And after that a bit of sea, which will be smooth'—(but
*will* it?)—'and a long journey, till we come
to a little village where two men will be sitting
on a wall waiting for me, *and then* the mountains
for my honeymoon, my Paradiso!'

You see, I am to have a quite unusual wedding
tour.  There is to be no dallying with love beside
a rippling and sequestered waterfall, alone with
Michael, who, at intervals, would strain me to his
heart.  *No*, there will always be those two young
men with us who are going to strain my muscles
all the time.  I am going up a 'chimney' for my
honeymoon.  I have had an ice-axe for a wedding
present and a most amazing pair of boots If I
love and honour Michael, and obey him and the
other two young men, I may *even* go up the wrong
side of a mountain some day!  'It all depends!'

Now I had not felt worried about these arrangements
till that moment by the gate, but Michael's
*then* unveiled my eyes.  I understood all in a moment
that here was the stark and awful tragedy of my
life.  The mountains were his honeymoon, the two
young men—his bride.  The cottage and the
cliffs, the sea, the long journey?—less than the rust
that never stained his ice-axe.  His wife?  Just
a Cook's tour (personally conducted) to his
bride—his two young men—his mountains—his
honeymoon—his Paradiso.

But he learned there, by the gate, that an inferno
comes for some before their paradiso.  In a storm
of indignation I declined to be his Cook's tour!

'All is over, Captain Ellsley.'

'No, it has not yet begun, Meg.'

'Oh, Michael!  Oh, *please*, Michael.'

'And so do you think to-morrow you could
bring yourself to kiss me of your own accord, just
once, my darling?'

.. vspace:: 2

And now I am alone in my own little room for
the last time, for by this hour to-morrow I shall
have more 'experience,' I shall be linked up with
all the other wedded lovers of the world: Charles
Kingsley and Fanny Grenfell, Robert Browning
and Elizabeth Barrett, William Gladstone and
Catherine Glynn!  Oh! poor old Dante!  Why
wasn't he content to love his Beatrice and not
marry Gemma?  But then the classics would have
been the poorer.  He might not have written his
*Inferno* or said:—

   |      'My wife
   |  Of savage temper, more than aught beside
   |    Hath to this evil brought me.'
   |

What?

Oh, yes, I know he didn't actually say it of
himself, but his own domestic hearth suggested it.
And, anyway, I will *not* be reproved for ignorance
of Dante by—the General Public.

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center

   FIFTEEN MONTHS LATER

.. vspace:: 1

'But when I became mature, I put away childish
things.'

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER XII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII

.. vspace:: 2

At other times when I have settled down to write,
the words have seemed to hurry from my brain so
fast that my pen has had to race along to catch
the thoughts before they passed into oblivion.  But
now—though the desire to write consumes me like
a fire, the words come haltingly.  I am afraid lest
I should mar the beauty of *this* thing I know about.
For I have found in marriage the loveliest experience
of all.

For on my wedding day, when all the flowers
and jewels and lace were laid aside, and all the
good-byes said; the last kiss given to my father,
and the farewells waved to all the loving village
folk who were gathered at the gates to watch me
go, I felt a little lonely, and wondered, as I drove
away, if anywhere could ever be again so sweet
as that old home.

When the little journey to the coast was made,
and the sun set in a glow of splendour in the sea,
the quiet night came down and the stars hung
softly like jewelled lamps about a purple sky.  Out
in the windless, magical sea-scented night my
husband caught and kissed me suddenly,—

'You can't send me away to-night, you little
fluttering thing.'

But there was something in the quality of his
kiss that frightened me, something almost ruthless
in the finality of the words, so that I fled away
upstairs in wild rebellion, because the summer's
dalliance was over.  I might elude the man no
more.  I must say like all the other women,—

   |  'Meet, if thou require it
   |    Both demands,
   |  Laying flesh and spirit
   |    In thy hands.'
   |

Oh, if it only might be 'to-morrow, not to-night,'
and when to-morrow came? why then
again—to-morrow.  Thus Mother Eve passed on to me
that fear which caught her once when she, perhaps,
was walking in the garden.

I went over to my window and leaned out.  The
sleeping world lay at my feet.  I looked across the
cliffs to where the quiet beauty of the sky met the
wide splendour of the sea, and the great moon
flooded the water, luring me to adventure out
upon that rippling, shining pathway, which seemed
to lead to God.

And as I looked I realised that all the natural
world responded always to the natural laws, and,
because of that obedience, there was that
restfulness and harmony that had always soothed and
quietened me, and the old 'washed' feeling came
and swept away rebellion.  So—when that time
came that Michael shut the door, and there was
no one in the room but him and me—he found
'duty' waiting, and that primeval fear that Eve
passed down the ages to her daughter.

I suppose some of my thoughts were painted
in my face, for I saw all that was dogged and
ruthless in the man rise up—directed against
himself, not me.  I watched him beat down and
back that ache and longing that was in his eyes
when he came in, till there was nothing left but a
vast, comprehending tenderness and the strength
to wait, until such time as that frightened look
had passed from his ladye's eyes.

And in the quiet shelter of his arms I listened
to the very perfect things he chose to say.  That
by reason of the 'worship' he had sworn to give me,
there could be no 'demands,' only a lovely gift
most urgently desired if I could give a thing, so
priceless, willingly.

And then at something wistful in his face, my
love rose up and cast out fear—that craven thing.
And there was a little kiss upon my husband's
lips, so small and light, he hardly knew it there
till it had gone—that little first one that I ever
gave him 'of my own accord.'  He took my hands
and with the worship deepening in his eyes he
asked,—

'Is my beloved mine?'

There flashed into my mind those words which,
I suppose, express most fully the completeness
and the glory and perfection of our human love,
and which convey, so perfectly, the utter rest and
peace and sweet contentment which both should
find in marriage, when they love.

So I leaned against my husband and he stooped
to hear the whispered words,—

'I am my beloved's, and his desire is towards me.'

So I gave.  And in the old surrender of the
woman to the man's exultant mastery, I, too,
found love's consummation—and lo!—there was
bread and wine—a chalice and a sacrament.

.. vspace:: 2

I have been married, really, such a very little
while, yet in these fifteen months in India I have
learned that sometimes women do not give
ungrudgingly—that people speak and write of marriage
as if its sweet abandonment were a thing of which
to be ashamed.  But if it were, would Christ have
used it as a type of that other union—mystic and
wonderful—between His Church and Him?

And so it seems to me that first should come
the 'marriage of the minds.'  If he 'demands' and
she gives grudgingly or of necessity, or with regret,
as if for something spoiled—they too are 'wasteful'
and have 'cheapened Paradise.'  They have not
discerned the Sacrament, but have

   |  'Spoiled the bread, and spilled the wine
   |  Which, spent with due respective thrift
   |  Had made brutes men, and men divine.'
   |

And, by the way, I'm sure it's time I got in all
those other bits I know about.  Those poor birds
of the South Pole, still waiting on the ice for me to
bring them fame!  And then that other king, but
oh! he was so dull.  He missed the best of everything
in life: for William II., 1087, never married;
and so of course he never knew what we shall know
in four more weeks, that 'A child's kiss, set on
thy sighing lips, shall make thee glad.'

And when the labour and the travail are all
done, and my baby rests in my arms, I shall have
more 'experience.'  I shall be linked up with all
the other mothers of the world.  Oh, dare I say
it?  Humbly I do.  I shall be linked up, faintly
and far off, even with Mary.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`PART II`:

.. _`CHAPTER 2-I`:

.. class:: center large bold

   PART II

.. class:: center large bold

   FOUR YEARS LATER

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER I

.. vspace:: 2

'I start life on my own account and don't like it.'

.. vspace:: 2

Grammar is not my strong point, and I never
could quote correctly, but my geography is
hopeless.  I always remember, however, when I am at
sea that the earth revolves around the sun, and
on its axis, too, for I can feel the double motion
in every fibre of my being.

Now that I am once more on dry land and the
universe has ceased to rock I have gone back to
my childish and comfortable belief that the world is
a nice, firm, square thing fixed on four legs like a
dining-room table.

I really am a shocking sailor, though 'the Gidger'[#]—my
small daughter—loves the sea.  The stewardess
was an angel of light to me, yet she insisted on
my turning out for all the boat drills.  I felt I would
so much rather lie in my berth than bother about
my place in a boat if we were torpedoed, that it
would be so much less exertion to go down
comfortably in the big ship than toss about in a small
boat on the chance of being saved.  One great
advantage of *mal de mer* is that all other sensations
are obliterated.  I was not conscious of the least
fear when the ship next to ours went down, and
the fact that our own escaped a like fate by a
miracle left me cold.  Even my loneliness and
misery at my first parting from Michael since our
marriage were all forgotten—swallowed up in one
great desire to lie down flat and perhaps take a
little iced champagne, 'for my stomach's sake,'
like poor darling Timothy.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

[#] *Re* the nick-name Gidger, the first 'G'
is pronounced as in
Gideon and the second 'g' as in German.

.. vspace:: 2

Over four whole years of life I've 'drawn a veil,'
and, oh, so much has happened since I finished
the last chapter.

I've got to know my husband, that's one thing.
A woman never really knows a man when first
she marries him.  That old woman in our village
used to say 'the longer you live with a man, the
less you like him,' and she ought to know, she
was 'thrice widowed.'

So I have discovered that mine is a very quaint
person, with primitive, old-world ideas, that make
him ruthless with himself and other people about
'work' and 'duty'; and because he never had a
sister (and a mother only for an hour), he's rather
apt to think any woman who powders her nose is
of necessity a painted Jezebel!  Shall I ever forget
his face on the steamer going out to India, when
one of those dear, delicious, natural, American
women produced a small mirror and a powder
puff in the social hall and said to her friend,—

'Say, Sadie, why didn't you tell me I'd got a
nose like a headlight?'

And his expression! when I told him that *of
course* I had the same things in my pocket.  Why,
good gracious, is there any woman who doesn't
powder her nose, though I do agree with him that
some of them put it on thicker than they need.

Then, too, he can, and will, only talk upon
subjects he understands.  Imagine the devastating
dullness of a life lived on those lines.  But now.
he says 'two in a family can't talk, there aren't
enough words to go round.'  So my black beast (as
I call him), has been content to adore and bully
me by turns, and fill his life with deeds, and leave
the words for other people and his wife.  Consequently,
I am not perfectly positive yet how much
less I like him.

One day, after the war had raged two years
in France, he came and told me that he was ordered
to the Front, and I could see the soldier and the
lover struggling in his face.

'Oh, Meg, I'm going, so I shan't miss it after
all, but how *can* I leave you?'

Other things besides the war have happened in
those four years.  Daddy did not settle down in
Devonshire, but his passion for men's souls has
driven him to one of the terrible places of the
earth, where he lives among natives, for whom he
has always had a kind of abhorrence.  He and
Porky wage war against the devil over an immense
tract of country, for daddy is on the Bench now,
and his diocese is next to that of the Bishop of
Ligeria.  They meet once a year, daddy and his
old fag, both consumed with a burning desire that
men's bodies should be clean and their souls washed
white, both so muscular and so militant that they
are utterly unable to comprehend 'the church
passive,' or to see why a man can't shoot and ride
and crack a joke as well as pray.  But then, as
Ross used to say, 'Father is a man first and a
parson afterwards.'  I have sometimes wondered,
since I have learned to see things 'farther than my
nose,' whether the sentiment expressed so elegantly
by my brother did not contain an element of truth,
*i.e.* 'that the chaps in the pews are more likely to
listen to what the chap in the pulpit is jawing
about if they know he's a good shot and rides as
straight as they do.'

But the thrill of the years was Cousin Emily,
who, without a word to any one, let her house in
Hampstead and turned up one day at daddy's
bungalow and announced that she had come to
keep house for him and to instil kindness to animals
among the natives.  My father (with that mediæval
humour that made people in the Middle Ages put
up gargoyles on their churches) says 'Emily's
parrot, Meg, has done more for the cause than any
missionary ever born will do.  The natives simply
love the collect for the seventeenth Sunday after
Trinity!'

At one of the annual meetings Porky asked
Emily if he could borrow the godly bird for *his*
diocese, but there was that in his eyes which made
her know he wanted her as well.  So daddy married
them, and they are now like the parrot, 'continually
given to all good works together!

The paralytic chaplain's health has given out.
The strain of one of the annual meetings (or else
the climate) was too much for him, so he has been
sent home, and has a curacy in England and a wife
now, who can lay those 'snow-white flowers'
against his hair!  And talking of England reminds
me that while Michael wrestled with his packing
in a kind of sulphurous haze, I pulled strings.
If you pull them hard enough in India you can
generally make the puppets work, so somehow I
got a passage and embarked for England three
days after Michael sailed for France.

Captain Everard, a great friend of my brother,
sailed in the same boat.  He was so kind
when I felt sick and kept my small daughter
amused.

When I got to Tilbury I was limper than
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 'damp rag hung over the
back of a chair.'  I don't know what I should have
done without the dear little stewardess to pack
for me, and Captain Everard to help me and the
Gidger through the customs, and all the other
nightmare horrors of a landing in England in war
time.  I suppose I said I was 'British' when the
Aliens Officer asked me my nationality, but I felt
like a disembowelled spirit.  (No, I don't mean
disembodied!)  Captain Everard could not come
to London with me, but got me a corner seat in a
carriage with only three men in it, nice chaps in
the Pioneers, one of whom Captain Everard knew
slightly.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-II`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II

.. vspace:: 2

At last after an interminable and arctic journey,
during which I passed through every phase of land
and sea sickness and might have died of cold but for
a timely dose of brandy from the Pioneers, the train
glided into the gloom of St Pancras station.  Suddenly
everything turned rose colour.  Such a delicious
surprise!  Waiting under one of the shaded lamps
was that wounded warrior—Ross.  He looked so
dear and big and beautiful in his kilt.  I flung
myself and the Gidger, regardless of life and limb,
and the restraining hands of three Pioneers, out
of the carriage and into his arms almost before the
train had stopped.  Did you ever know anything
so delightful?  He had coaxed the shipping company
for information about the boat and got leave from
the hospital to meet me.  He enveloped us both
in a huge hug with his one good arm.  Oh, I was
pleased to see him after five years, my dear adorable
twin brother.  I told him about the Pioneers, and
he said,—

'Really, Meg, I think drinking spirits in a railway
carriage with strange soldiers is about the limit of
anything even you've ever done!'

But he thanked them very nicely.  He has such
charming manners when he chooses (he ought to
have, I brought him up), he told them I was such
a bad traveller, and that he was much obliged to
them for looking after me.  The Pioneers said it
was a great relief to their minds that some one had
met me; so if it was to theirs you can imagine
what it was to mine.

The Gidger loved 'Uncle Woss' at once, and was
deeply interested in his M.C. ribbon and bandaged
arm, and the admiration seemed mutual, for Ross
said,—

'Oh, what a Poppet, Meg.'

Whereupon the Gidger, ever athirst for
information, asked,—

'What's a Poppet, Uncle Woss?'

My brother replied that a Poppet was a little girl
in a white fur coat, and immediately buttoned her
up in one, while he called a soldier, who was standing
near, to 'bring the other coat,' and, as he helped
me on with it, he said, 'You remember Brown,
don't you, Meg?'

'Why, Sam! of course I do,' and I shook hands.
'However do you always manage it?'

'Oh, got a knee this time,' said Ross, and stared
at Brown, who looked extremely sheepish.  'Where's
your maid?' he added.

'Haven't brought her, couldn't get a passage.'

'Oh, what rotten luck; how have you managed?'

'Captain Everard did a lot for me.'

'But not your hair, surely, Meg?  (Get a porter,
Brown, and fish the baggage out.)'

So while Brown 'fished,' I revelled in my warm
coat, and tried to see how it set on me at the
back and said, 'Why, Ross, it's sable.'

'Well, you don't think I'd give you a rabbit one,
do you?' said my brother.

Being uneconomically inclined myself, I felt I
ought to add, 'But what extravagance!'

He scoffed, and said he'd have me know his
godmother had left all her money to him, and not
to me, that a fur coat was cheaper than pneumonia,
anyway, besides being less trouble to one's relatives,
and for those two reasons *only* he had bought it.
'I've got a car waiting outside,' he said, 'so that
while remarks on finance, coming from you, are
deeply interesting, my child, they are also apt to
be expensive, as it's up to thirty bob by now, the
train's so late.'

As we drove out of the station Ross said, 'Michael
wired to the Savoyard for your rooms, and my
hospital is quite close,' and then he added in an
airy manner, 'Oh, by the way, I knew you'd want
a nursemaid for the Gidger, so I engaged one for
you.  She's pretty and seems nice, so I didn't
bother about references.'

I didn't want to appear ungrateful, so I only
murmured that I could see about those later on, and
I drew a little closer to him and squeezed his arm
for joy at seeing him again, while the Gidger gazed,
entranced, out of the window at the traffic.

'Ross,' I said, 'how on earth does Sam always
manage it?'

'I dunno,' said Ross, staring through the glass
at Sam's impassive back.  'It's extraordinary.
When I got this bullet in my arm he came up a
moment after, said he'd bust his knee.  Sometimes
I think he must have some arrangement with the
d——'

'With a person that we need not name.'

'Just so,' said Ross, and giggled as he used to
do when I reproved him.

But, all the same, it is a funny thing that Sam
always has managed to get with Ross, from the
time he turned up as the school boot-boy, to the
day he appeared in my brother's dug-out with a
can and said, 'Hot water, sir,' in just the same old
way.

When I arrived at the hotel the 'pretty
nursemaid' turned out to be my darling Nannie.

'When you feel you can stop kissing them both,
Meg would like your references.'

'References given *and* required,' laughed Nannie.

'Then the deal's off.  Meg's past won't bear
looking into.'

Ross had just crammed my rooms with flowers
and the air was full of scent.  He said Michael
told him 'heaps of lilies.'  Did he remember that
the scent of those is love?  I do think, however,
he might have ordered the removal of the earwigs.

I was so tired that I came upstairs directly after
dinner.  The Gidger was already fast asleep.

'Pretty lamb,' said Nannie, just as she always
used to do.

So like the gardener's cat in Punch, I felt that
we could

   |  'Sit among the greenhouse flowers
   |    And sleep for hours and hours and hours.'
   |

Just before I sailed I got a mail from daddy.
He was about to start upon a journey to some
scattered mission stations 'to confirm the churches,'
and after that he said 'perhaps I shall come
home.'  Oh, won't it be too topping if he does.  He was
very excited, too, over the two new missionaries
who had come out to the only healthy station.
He writes:—

.. vspace:: 2

'They're really quite nice, Meg, the Reverend
Mister has a heart of gold.  She's solid gold right
through, only you know, little 'un, those very
gold people do have funny clothes and shoes
sometimes.  I'm afraid she's rather inclined to think
that curly hair is "wicked."  I don't know what
she'd say to yours, Meg, but then the children of
the clergy always go quickest to the dogs; you've
said that heaps of times, so of course it must be
right.'

.. vspace:: 2

He finished up:—

.. vspace:: 2

'Good-bye, darling, don't forget that whatever
the next few months may bring you, "underneath
are the Everlasting Arms."'

.. vspace:: 2

Daddy is such a comfortable person, he doesn't,
like Aunt Amelia, jaw about the war and say it's
'a judgment' *every* time he writes.  When it first
broke out he said that God seemed to be speaking
to the world with great vigour about something,
and was I listening for the bit He meant for me?

Really, when you come to think of it, arms are
nice things when one is tired.  War makes one
tired, all women hate it.  I wish Michael wasn't in
France.  I wish he could have seen his way to take
the staff job he was offered.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-III`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III

.. vspace:: 2

I have had such a glorious sleep!  The gardener's
cat wasn't in it, but the earwig was—in my bed—and
Nannie wouldn't let me kill it because 'earwigs
are such good mothers.'

Oh, what bliss a bed is after a bunk, the joy of
a motor hoot instead of a fog horn, and the sight
of a house opposite one's windows instead of a
sickening swirl of green water and sky.

But I felt rather at a loose end, and when Nannie
came in with my breakfast I said,—

'I wonder what I'd better do to-day?'

'Buy a hat, I should think, dearie, and then go
to the Bank.'

She is a comfort!

She sat on the edge of my bed while the Poppet
and I had breakfast.  I believe her private opinion
is that Michael has kept us short of food, as we
ate everything but the crockery, but when a person
has lived on a dry biscuit for weeks, a person is apt
to feel a bit peckish at the end of such a fast.

Dear old Nannie hasn't altered much, she carries
her years lightly, it's just the same kind face, with
the hair a little grayer.  She says she would have
come out to India to me ages ago if it hadn't been
for the war.  We had so much to say to one another
that I got rid of quite a respectable amount of the
conversation which had accumulated during the
voyage, for I was too sick even to talk!

It is good to be in London.  I went to my old
shop.  'Estelle' remembered me and said, 'Madame
is of a youthfulness inconceivable to have such a
big little daughter,' which is most satisfactory.
The 'big little daughter' looks enchanting in a white
fur cap to match her coat, and I got a small soft
brown thing 'of a price preposterous.'  Captain
Everard called to inquire after me, so I asked him
to lunch and thanked him for all he had done for
me.  He said he hardly recognised me in a vertical
position, having seen me prostrate so long.  After
lunch I spent the afternoon with Ross.  He said
he was 'quite well.'

'Then why are you in bed?' I inquired politely.

'Matron's orders,' snapped the soldier bit of
him.  'Drat the woman,' said my brother.

He hasn't altered much, though the war has
painted shadows and grim lines about his mouth;
his eyes, too, are sterner than they used to be,
otherwise he is the same good-looking, big, teasing,
maddening brother.  He thought I hadn't changed,
and seemed the 'same rum kid.'  I saw matron
afterwards.  She told me that his arm is very
badly injured, and she feared at first that he would
lose it, but it is on the mend at last, though it
will be months before he can go out again,
'for which,' she said, 'you won't be sorry.'  Then
she added, 'I don't know if you've any plans,
but he would be much better if he could be
somewhere where it's quiet.  When the pain comes on
we simply cannot keep the place quiet enough.
The slamming of a door, the noise of footsteps in
the room make his pain almost unendurable.
It's the shot nerve, you know.  You can't, in a
house like this, keep every door from banging,
though we do our best.  He would be much
better with you in the country, though you
would need a nurse.  A right arm makes a
man so helpless; he can't cut his food up, or dress
himself.  Of course, there's Sam,' and then she
laughed.  'He'll probably be leaving his hospital
soon; he's close by, you know.'

'But could he manage?  How could he wait on
Ross if he can't walk?'

'Oh, he can walk enough for that,' she said.
'He's already interviewed me on the subject more
than once.  He says the captain only wants an
arm which *he* has got.  If you could let him rest
his knee all day and just help your brother night
and morning it might do, though you'd have the
pair of them really on your hands.'

'But do the men ever get leave from hospital
like that?' I asked.

'Oh, there is such a thing as extended hospital
furlough,' said matron; 'it doesn't usually apply
to knees, but all the hospitals are crammed.  I
dare say I could work it.  You'd have to give him
time off sometimes to go before his M.O.'

'Well, if you think you can work it,' I said
doubtfully.

'You can work most things, if you know how!
Your brother's very angry with me to-day because
I made him stay in bed after the excitement of
your arrival.  I am in very deep disgrace,' said
matron, smiling.

As I went along the frosty streets I promised
myself a perfect orgy of shopping.  My wardrobe
is too diaphanous for this climate.  The cold is
almost unbelievable after India.  When I got
back to the hotel I found the Gidger had had a
gorgeous afternoon at the Zoo, and was sitting up
in bed, eating her supper, while Nannie cut her
bread and butter into 'ladies' fingers,' as she had
done, oh, how many times for me when I was
four years old.

I told Nannie matron's views, and she said,
'Why don't you go into rooms, Miss Margaret?
Then you could have him.  You and I could manage
for him.'

'You can see him letting a "parcel of women"
hang round him, can't you, Nannie?  No, it must
be a nurse or Sam, if we can get him.'  But I agreed
to wire to Fernfold, where a pal of Nannie lives,
who has a friend who takes in lodgers, and would
make us comfortable.

Just as I was going down to dinner I got a trunk
call.  It was Uncle Jasper.  'Your aunt wants to
know when you are coming down to us,' he boomed.

'Where are you speaking from?' I asked; 'the
Manor House?'

'No, we're at Rottingdean.'

'Wallowing in old churches, at least your uncle
is,' came my aunt's voice, a long way off.  'Won't
you come to us, darling, I'm so worried about
Eustace.  No, I can't tell you on the telephone, and
we'd so love to have you.'

'Why aren't you at home?' I said.

'Yes, another call; oh, ... don't cut us off!'

'Your aunt,' said Uncle Jasper, seizing the
receiver, 'has been very ill with influenza.'

'Nonsense,' said Aunt Constance, 'don't frighten
the child, Jasper.  I'm all right now, darling.'

'Shall I meet the 2.5 to-morrow?' said my uncle.

So I told him about Ross and Fernfold.

'What's the church there?' he inquired; 'Norman
or Early English?'

I could hear his snort of indignation when I said
I thought it was a new Wesleyan Chapel!  Then
we got cut off.

Nannie says that her friend's friend prefers to
board her lodgers, 'and you'd better let her, dearie.
You won't like contending with the rations.'  So
it's settled we're to be boarded if we go to Fernfold.
I'm so dead tired I must be getting sleeping sickness.
Will there be a letter from 'the black beast' in the
morning?





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-IV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV

.. vspace:: 2

Such shoppings!  The Poppet and I are now
considerably warmer than we were, and, we hope,
more beautiful.  Certainly Michael is
considerably poorer.

I have seen several old friends and had lunch
with Monica Cunningham.  She has grown very
pretty and still moves in the graceful way that
made Charlie in the old days call her 'a Greek
poem.'  She has risen to the occasion, as daddy always
said she would, and done the splendid thing like all
the other girls—exchanged luxury for hospital work
at Hammersmith.  She was very amusing about
it.  She said that at first she had visions of herself
in a becoming uniform holding the fevered hands
and smoothing the pain-racked brows of wounded
warriors, but what she got was all the kicks
and none of the halfpence.  However, she seemed
quite happy.

'Meg,' she said, 'those men I nurse—they are
"everything that really matters"—as your father
used to say.'

And I wondered if she had learned that other bit
of daddy's, *i.e.* that the lack of grandfathers was
not important then!

I tried to get her to talk about Charlie Foxhill,
for I'm certain he's been in love with her for years.

'Oh,' she said, 'he's quite a decent boy,' but I
think her eyes said something stronger, and I was
glad, because I'm devoted to them both.

Then I took the Gidger to Hampstead to call on
Aunt Amelia.

In the old days I used to heave a sigh of relief
when I came away from 7 Victoria Gardens, and
things are still unchanged.  One enters a house
full of 'judgment' and leaves the 'love' outside
in the garden.  There is the same high moral tone
about Aunt Amelia's conversation.  Her 'fydo'
does the things he always did.  Her drawing-room
is still decorated in tones of mustard and
bestrewn with antimacassars.  Only in the throes
of a bilious attack can one appreciate the scheme
of colour.  My aunt greeted me with her accustomed
coolness, but gave a peck to the Gidger's cheek,
which that small person promptly rubbed off;
this was a bad start.

The same sour-faced maid brought in the same
uninteresting, microscopic tea.  The Poppet, who
is used to a square meal at 4.30, said clearly,—

'Muvver, is this all the tea we're going to have?'

Aunt Amelia remarked acidly that she had
bad table manners, and inquired if she had begun
to learn the catechism.

Here the Gidger said pleasantly, 'I should like
to go home now.'

Whereupon Aunt Amelia observed that she
seemed as badly brought up as most modern
children, and that my blouse was very low, and
my neck looked most unsuitable for a Bishop's
daughter.

I wonder if my neck is unsuitable, and, if so,
isn't the Bishop the one to blame?

'Can you sing a hymn, child?' said my aunt.

'No, but I can say a little piece that Captain
Everard taught me.'

'Can you, darling?' I said, rather frightened.
I knew some of Captain Everard's 'little pieces.'  'I
don't suppose your great-aunt would care for that.'

'But I should like to say it for her,' said the
child obligingly.  'It's what a poor man said when
he was tired on Sunday.'

At the word 'Sunday' Aunt Amelia thawed a
little, so the Poppet recited,—

   |  'To-morrow's Monday, Mrs Stout
   |  Says she must put the washing out.
   |  Why can't she save my scanty tin
   |  And try and keep the washing in?
   |  The next day's Tuesday, what a pest.
   |  Why can't the devil let me rest?'
   |

'That will do,' said Aunt Amelia, and rang the
bell for her maid.  'Take the child away, and
perhaps you could teach her a hymn, Keziah.'

'Yes, my lady,' said Keziah.

Then I tried to tell my aunt a little about my
journey.  'I was so ill,' I said, 'the sea was simply
awful.'

'Don't say "awful," Margaret, there's nothing
awful but being in hell.'

I felt the conversation languishing.  I asked if
there was any news.  It seemed safer to let my
Aunt do all the talking, besides 'my prickles'
were *all* out.

'I suppose,' she said, 'you've heard about your
cousin, Eustace?'

'No,' I replied.  'Aunt Constance said she was
in trouble, but she couldn't tell me why just then.
What is it?'

'I expect she's ashamed,' said Aunt Amelia
acidly.  It's all her fault.  Your Uncle Jasper
knows the truth, at least he ought to,' but as I
could not hear a word against those two beloveds,
I said again,—

'Tell me about Eustace.'

'Monastery,' she said.  'Monks got hold of him
and he has finally decided.  I'm sorry for your uncle;
there'll be no heir now, but it serves him right.
He knows the truth and hasn't followed it.  I look
upon it as a judgment on him.  Your aunt's
persuaded him to let the new vicar—"priest," she
calls him—put flowers in your father's old church.
Candles will come next, of course; it's only the
thin end of the wedge.  And then your Aunt
Constance talks about "union," but does she think
that I would ever unite with people who have
flowers and candles?'

'But,' I put in, 'father always said you needn't
unite about the flowers and candles, but just in
your mutual love of God.'

'Your father was always too charitable, but
he's "one of the right sort," and I don't know
what he'll say when he gets my last letter.'

I thought to myself he'll say, 'What a pearl you
are, Amelia,' or else he'll lose his temper.  Darling
daddy!  He'd die for the faith that is in him, but
he regards his Lord's 'Judge not' as a command,
consequently it is really rather pleasant to live
with him.

'I think,' I remarked, getting up, 'I must go
now,' so she rang for the Gidger.

'Well, and have you learned a hymn, child?'

'She's learnt four lines, m'lady,' said Keziah.
'She isn't very quick.  Say them, miss.'

So the Gidger folded two small hands, shut her
eyes in accordance with instructions in a way that
set my teeth on edge, and chanted,—

   |  'Go bury thy sorrow,
   |    The world hath its share.
   |  Go bury it deeply,
   |    Go hide it with care.'
   |

But anything less like a person with a sorrow
that needed burial was the radiant Gidger when
she opened her eyes.

'Very nice,' said Aunt Amelia, 'very suitable
to these solemn times.'

'Yes, m'lady,' said Keziah.

'Look at my little cross Aunt Constance sent me,'
said the Gidger, showing the small pearl thing
with great pride.  Aunt Amelia threw up her
hands, while Keziah looked as if she'd like to.

'No one,' exclaimed my aunt 'can possibly be a
Christian who wears a cross or a crucifix.  If this
poor ignorant child came to stay in this godly
house we might begin to see some signs of grace.
But of course,' she added hastily, 'I couldn't possibly
have her; a child in the house would be too much
for me.'

So then she pecked my cheek and gave me two
incoherent tracts, one for myself, called 'The
Scarlet Woman,' and one for Ross, entitled 'Do you
drink, smoke, swear, or gamble?'  To the poor
Poppet she presented a book called *Heaven or Hell?*
with lurid and appalling pictures of both states
as they appeared to the mind of the writer.  Then
we drove to the hospital.

Ross was delighted with his tract, though he
thought the questions 'rather intimate.'  He said
he should write one for Aunt Amelia, entitled 'Do
you paint, powder, or wear bust-bodices?'

The Gidger had a second tea and so much flattering
attention that I was afraid her head would be
turned; the piece about the poor man who was
tired on Sunday being received with cheers.

'What a row,' said a voice at the door, 'oh,
what an awful, wicked, fiendish noise to make,
you must be mad!  I cannot spend my entire day
coming in to ask the joke so as to tell the others.
You, as usual, Captain Fotheringham, why, you're
worse in bed.'

'Come in, sister,' four men shouted.

'No,' said the voice.  'I'm going out to fetch
four cabs and keepers, and you're all off to Bedlam
this night.  Why, you're not having more tea?'
she said, catching sight of a cup, and then she came
right in and saw me sitting by the fire.

'Oh,' she exclaimed, 'I beg your pardon.  Brown
wants to know if he can do anything for you
to-night,' turning to Ross.

'He can hang himself,' replied my grateful
brother, 'after he's put my sister in a cab.'

'I don't want a cab,' I said.  'I'd rather wait
and go in one of sister's four.'

Going home, the Gidger remarked, 'I don't think
I like going to see my gweat-aunt much.  Need I
go any more? and I hate hymns.  What is a sign
of grace, muvver?'

A telegram awaited me at the hotel to say that
the rooms at Fernfold are vacant, so I have wired
to say we will take them from the 28th of January.
Oh, when shall I get a letter from my Belovedest?





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.. _`CHAPTER 2-V`:

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   CHAPTER V

.. vspace:: 2

We left the Savoyard after lunch yesterday and
arrived at this pretty little village in time for tea.

I suppose Uncle Jasper would say that I must
get in a bit of 'background' now, but I'd so much
rather be 'dim and confused.'

And is Surrey 'clear cut'?  Is any county in the
south of England, except perhaps Cornwall, with
its spray-worn rocks and fringe of foaming sea?

This little village—you can look it up on a map
if you want to.  It's near a powder factory and a
Pilgrim Way, and yet not so *very* near them!  In
summer it is cupped in a circle of gorse and broom,
and all the country round is a soft blur of silver
birches and heather.  There are bits of common
land and little woods with nightingales, there are
cowslip fields as well, but at the moment everything
is deep in snow.

Our lodgings are in a house with a nice new
thatch and my sitting-room is exactly opposite
one of the village pubs.

The landlady is a Mrs Tremayne—Cornish, of
course—and a regular character.  She has a loud
voice and she shouts all her remarks at the top of
it.  She calls every one 'my dear,' in Cornish
fashion.  Her first remark was, 'Well, now, my
dear, I 'ope you'll be comfortable like.  You've
had a 'ansome but cold day for travelling, and no
mistake.'  She is a dear old thing, and Nannie seems
to like her.

The Gidger made a conquest of her at once.
She was a nurse for many years before she married,
so 'likes to hear a child about the house.'

The rooms were very clean, but bare, and in
spite of a nice fire looked rather appalling and
comfortless as a prospective winter residence.
However, after a very sleepy Gidger had been
put to bed, Nannie and I unpacked.  Ross had given
me a big box of flowers, and I filled all the vases
and jars, and set out lots of photographs and books
and cushions, and by the time dinner was ready
I had transformed my sitting-room into quite a
habitable place with the homey feel that books
and flowers and firelight always give, while Nannie
worked miracles upstairs in bedrooms.

The dinner was distinctly quaint: something
funny in a pie-dish, with potatoes on the top.  The
top was brown.  I liked that part.  Nannie says
I'm not to be dainty; food is very difficult just
now.

At present we can only have two bedrooms and
two sitting-rooms, as there are artist ladies across
the passage.  Their rooms are my Naboth's
vineyard, as they would make such nice nurseries
for the Poppet.  We shall want to spread out if
Ross comes.

It is so quiet here after the noise and bustle of
London, but the air is lovely.  It was rather an
effort to be cheerful last night as I had so hoped for
a letter, and I missed Ross, but the Gidger woke
me this morning with 'Muvver, four letters from
daddy.  *Oh*, aren't you sleepy, darling?'

When I could get my eyes sufficiently open I
found Nannie and breakfast (rather a queer one),
and four precious letters from Michael arranged
round the tea-pot.  Of course they had missed me
at the Savoyard and been re-directed.  I was so
pleased to get them.

I was in the middle of dressing when Mrs
Tremayne brought up a wire.  Telegrams give one the
creeps these days, but this was from Ross to say
that he was arriving by the 7.10 to-night.  Nannie
and I hurriedly held a council of war on the subject
of bedrooms.  There is a small dressing-room
vacant, but it really will not do for Ross.  He gets
bad nights, and he must be as comfortable as
possible, so Nannie and I towed all my things
into the little room and made the other ready
for him and coaxed the landlady for a fire.  Fires
seem to be difficult to obtain in this house, 'coal
being such a price.'

Some of the things in my new room are very
droll.  There is a case of stuffed birds, and a glass
ship in a bottle, lots of ribbon bows, and a
hair-tidy like a balloon, made out of an electric light
bulb encased in yellow crochet, with an ingenious
'basket' constructed out of a small jelly-pot covered
in with yellow silk.  The Gidger thought it was the
most fascinating thing she'd ever seen, and asked
for it, but Nannie said, 'Landladies don't like
things moved.'

There is also a unique collection of pictures and
a lot of texts, but the thing which I most love is
an engraving called 'The Believer's Vision.'  It
is a priceless work.  On a low couch, with folded
hands and a smug smile of satisfaction on her
depressing countenance, lies 'the Believer' fast
asleep.  She has a plate of grapes and oranges
beside her on a table, and there seems to be a good
deal of Greek drapery about as well.  Up in one
corner is 'The Vision'—two fat angels lying
long-ways on a hole they've scooped out of the ceiling.
Oh, they are fat: two to a ton, as Michael would
say, and they are blowing trumpets and have
heaps of feathers.  It is a most entrancing work
of art.

After lunch, which I think was weirder than the
dinner (I hope I am not dainty) I took the Gidger
for a walk and bought a lot of fruit and biscuits.
Fernfold is very sweet.  All Surrey is, I think,
with its little woods and commons.

After tea I went down to the station, and Ross
arrived, apparently in the worst of tempers; Brown
was with him.

'Why, Brown,' I exclaimed, 'I didn't know you
were coming.'

'Nor I, but he's not staying,' growled Ross.

'It's quite convenient,' I said, 'only there isn't
a bed.  I expect we could fix up something.'

'Oh, that don't matter, ma'am,' said Brown,
'don't bother about me.'

'Brown can sleep on the edge of a knife, Meg.
And I hope it'll cut him,' Ross said vindictively.

'Yes, sir, thank you, sir,' said Brown, with the
greatest possible deference, 'won't you get into the
cab, sir?  You oughtn't to stand after the journey.'

'Oh, don't fuss.  If you are going to fuss,' said
Ross, 'you can go to the——'

'Ross!'

'Can I never say it?'

'No,' I said severely, '*never*.'

'But if I go and stay at Hindhead, surely there I——'

'Yes, but there you must say "punchbowl"
after it.'

'Seems a bit complicated, Meg; how pious you've
grown!  What are you standing still for, Brown?
Get the luggage and get a lick on you,' said my
amiable relative, 'and then go back to London,
don't——'

Brown had however vanished on to the platform
and I followed.

'Sam,' I remarked, and somehow all the years
slipped back, and he was just the jolly boy at Uncle
Jasper's lodge, and I the Rector's little daughter.
'You can't go back to-night; there's no train; the
last one goes at seven o'clock.'

'So the matron said, miss'—(what a wily bird,
she said she'd 'work it')—'but, don't you worry,
miss, I'll come up presently, it'll be all right, there
ain't no call for you to worry, miss'—(there never
was in Sam's view)—'we've got through worse
than this,' said Sam as we got back to the cab.

'Got all the things?' asked Ross.

'Yes, sir.'

'Good-night, Brown.'

'Good-night, sir.'

'What happened about Brown?' I asked going home.

'Oh,' said Ross, as if the subject frankly bored
him, 'matron sent me in a cab to Waterloo, with
an orderly to get my ticket.  I was sitting in my
carriage, trying to turn the evening paper, when
Brown said, "Allow me, sir," and then before I
could swear at him, he got out into the corridor
and the train went off.  It was such a swot to try
to find him, so there it is.'

'Oh,' I began.

'I am tired, Meg, can't think why she made me
come so late; never seems much sense in women's
orders.'

The first thing we did on arriving at the lodgings
was to fight fiercely about bedrooms.  His room
looked so pleasant with flowers, a cheerful fire, a
box of his favourite cigarettes, and a whole box of
matches!

'Very nice,' said the invalid, 'and may I ask
where you sleep?'

'Oh, I have a dear little room near by.'

'I should like to see this "dear little room near
by," Meg.'

'You can't,' I said.  'It's all in a muddle and my
things aren't put away.'

'I should like,' reiterated Ross, in his most
maddening manner, 'to see this "dear little room
near by."'

So of course he saw it.  He wandered slowly
round it, gazing at the works of art, until he came
to 'The Believer's Vision,' which seemed to fascinate
him.  After a long pause in front of it he said,
'Well, it 'ud wreck my faith completely,' and then
he collected an armful of my clothing and
proceeded to hang it up in the other room that had
been so carefully prepared for him.

'Oh, Ross, don't,' I begged.  'I much prefer the
little room.'

'Why didn't you choose it at first?' he said
with unanswerable logic, 'and why isn't there a
fire in it?'

'I made the other room so nice for you,' I wailed,
and we can't all have fires; coal is so expensive.'

'Parsons say the war has taught us many things,'
said Ross, 'but I never expected it would teach
you to go without a fire because it happened to be
expensive.  Why, it's a modern miracle, and
ought to be reported to the Pope.'

'But it's difficult to get, as well.'

'Then we'll buy millions of logs and cartloads
of peat,' he said.  'You're not going to sleep in
this room without a fire, or any other room for the
matter of that.  Why, it's like an ice-house after
India.  Come on, Nannie, help me to get this
female gear out of my dug-out.  Don't be cross,
old girl!'

But I was cross.  I hate being called a 'female'
and my clothes 'gear.'  Why do I always live with
cavemen who will have their own way and trample
on my deepest feelings?  I determined, however,
that I would try again and said, 'But the mattress
has such lumps and——'

'I adore lumps; how can you be so selfish, Meg?'

'But I don't want to be turned out of my room
like this.'

'Well, that's what I keep on saying,' said Ross.
'How inconsistent women are.  What time is
dinner?  Can I have a bath?'

'Just turned it on, sir,' said Brown, coming into
the room and beginning to unpack!

So I left them.  When Ross went downstairs I
heard him call back, 'Sam, there are several things
in my room that I don't want.  I've left them in
the middle of the floor, get rid of them.'  And I
wondered how Sam would carry out my brother's
impossible orders, as landladies 'don't like things
moved.' I peeped in as I went down.  Brown was
gazing at a weird assortment: all the antimacassars,
some of the texts, the case of birds, and
the ship in the glass bottle, the hair tidy like a
balloon (which I rescued for the Gidger) and last
but not least the 'Believer's Vision,' which Ross
had taken off the wall and stood upside down
upon the pile, in a frantic effort to save his faith
from shipwreck.

I went down to dinner, and Brown waited.
Liver and bacon! with that variety of mashed
potato which my refined relative has from his
earliest youth called 'worms.'  I refused the liver
and took some bacon; so did Ross, remarking that
he 'Never could eat "works."'

Brown handed Ross the next course, which was
rice pudding.

'Why do you bother to offer me this filth?'
said Ross indignantly to Brown, 'you know I never
touch it.  What's the other stuff, jelly?  I'll have
some of that.'

'Packet,' said Brown, 'by the look of it, sir;
shouldn't recommend it.'

But I, determining not to be dainty, said it
looked jolly good and I would have some.

'Take it away, Brown, she's not going to eat
hoofs and get a pain in her gizzard to start off with.
Give her some pudding.'

Ross helped himself liberally to bread and butter
and cheese.

'What funny butter,' he observed.

'Margarine, sir.'

'Oh, how tiring,' said Ross, pushing it away,
'give me a clean plate.  Why *can't* they colour it
blue?'

Coffee consisted of a jug of hot milk and some
black stuff in a bottle.

We adjourned to the fire and I had quite a nice
supper of hot milk and biscuits, apples, and
chocolates; and we talked and talked, and got a bit
levelled up with life after five years of separation.

Then I went to bed.  But, oh, not to sleep.  The
family's appalling habit of leaving doors half open
prevented that, and I heard Ross say to Brown
when he came up to bed (his voice does carry so),
'What's to be done, Sam, they can't stop here?'

'Certainly not, Master Ross.  Never saw such a
dinner in my life, though the cooking was all
right.'

'Yes, it's the stuff they cooked that's wrong.
Can't you do something?' said Ross vaguely.
Sam has always seemed to be able to do the things
that put our muddles right.

'Well, you see, sir,' said Brown, 'it's a bit
awkward; Mrs Ellsley seems to be paying very little,
and food is expensive.'

'Have you ever known my sister pay very little
for anything if it was possible to pay a lot?'

'No, sir, and that's what I can't understand
about it.'

'But how much *is* she paying, then?' inquired
my brother.

'Six guineas, sir.'

'But aren't there always extras in a place like
this?' said Ross vaguely, searching his mind for
recollections of lodgings at the sea.  'Don't they
always make the profits out of—cruets, I think they
call it?'

'Miss Margaret don't seem to have gone into
any details,' said Brown.

'No,' agreed Ross, 'she wouldn't.  But I should
have thought you could feed two women and a
child better than that for eighteen pounds a week.
Well, they'll have to pay more, that's all.'

'But it isn't eighteen pounds,' said Brown.

'You said it was just now,' said Ross, 'six
guineas each.

'But it was two guineas that was meant, sir.
Six guineas for the lot of them.'

I heard my brother sink into a seat and scrape
his feet along the floor, as he does when the burden
of life becomes too heavy to be borne standing up.

'Do you mean to say, Sam, that the landlady
proposes to provide rooms, beds, food, baths, boots,
fires, cruets, and——' here Ross searched violently
in his mind for more things which Mrs Tremayne
was willing to provide, 'and "Believer's Visions"
for two pounds a week each?  Why, she's a public
benefactor.'

'That's the price, sir.  She said she asked six
guineas and the lady agreed without arguing, as
her lodgers usually do.'

'Well, of course, that's the explanation, Sam.
She thought she meant "each."'

'The "she's" me,' I said to myself, to make it
clearer in my mind.

'Not a doubt about it, sir,' said Sam.

'Funny things, women,' said my brother reflectively,
'never seem able to make a proper arrangement
with a hotel, or book a cabin.  The only mess
I ever got into on a ship was when I let one of my
aunts book my berth going out to—I forget
where——'

'Indeed, sir,' said Brown, with interest.

'Yes, wrote and said she'd booked my berth
but the ship was full and I'd have to share a cabin
with a Captain Booth.  Hoped I didn't mind.  I
loathed it, of course.'

'Of course,' said Brown.

'However, there was nothing to be done but put
up with it, so I prayed it might be the Captain
Booth in the 4th Lancers that I knew a bit.  Where
were you, Sam, that time?'

'Typhoid.'

'Oh, yes, of course.  Well, I got down to the
ship and turned in early, as I was dead done
after—forget what I'd been doing; kept half an eye on
the door to see what my stable companion was
going to be like, and then Captain Booth came in.'

'Was it Captain Booth of the 4th Lancers?'
asked Brown.

'Salvation Army lass,' said Ross laconically, and
Brown laughed, as he used to do in Uncle Jasper's
woods.

Suddenly somebody knocked violently on the wall.

'Anybody ill, do you think?' asked my brother.

'Oh, no, sir, making too much row—laughed a
bit too loud, I expect, woke up the other lodgers.'

'What a rum place,' observed my brother, and
then there was silence till the water ran in the bath,
and the house for a few moments was turned into
a pond with a polar bear in it.

Then I went to sleep.





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.. _`CHAPTER 2-VI`:

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   CHAPTER VI

.. vspace:: 2

Brown has, apparently, been 'doing things' the
last few days.  Particularly nice breakfasts turn
up now, a maid lights my fire and the bath water
is hot.  Ross informed me that he had taken on the
running of the show, but that, with the best will
in the world, Mrs Tremayne could not supply
butter, so he'd wired to Aunt Constance for a
supply, and that if I could put up with marmalade
till it arrived it would ease his mind.

I have recovered my temper, too, and have decided
that cavemen have their advantages.  The one
with whom my lot is cast at the moment knows
how to stoke a fire, if nothing else.  The millions of
logs have begun to arrive, too, so at any rate we
shall be warm.  Ross says it's a pity I didn't live
in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, for then I could
have got really thawed on the days they lighted
the burning fiery furnace.

The other occupants of the house are two maiden
ladies—'artists.'  Ross calls them the 'spiders,'
because they entice into their parlour all their
friends and acquaintances, and encourage them
to buy their 'pictures,' and they borrow; oh, how
they borrow!  It is 'Could Mrs Ellsley kindly lend
some ink?' or 'We have run out of notepaper and
should be so obliged, etc.'  Yesterday their
newspaper hadn't come.  'Would Captain Fotheringham
spare his for ten minutes?'  Captain Fotheringham
spared it with a very ill grace, but as the ten
minutes became fifteen, and then twenty, and
then thirty, he announced his intention of singing
Hymn 103 outside their door.

'Why a hymn?' I inquired.

'Because it expresses in concise, lucid, clear,
and unbiased language the perfectly intolerable
situation which has arisen,' and he departed down
the passage, singing loudly, 'My Times are in thy
hand.'

Alas! this afternoon we are in deep disgrace,
for the Spiders have given notice, and are going
in about a week, because of us.

They object, it seems, to meeting Brown on the
stairs and landings, and to the number of baths
we have.  Since we arrived there is never any hot
water left for washing their blouses.  The climax
came, apparently, this morning.  Brown goes
into the bathroom about 7.30 a.m. and cleans the
bath.  I saw him do it once at home, so I know
what happens.  He sprinkles it all over with some
powder in a tin, and then scrubs and scours it till
you'd think all the enamel would come off.  And
then he washes it out with hot water and a brush
on a long handle, and then dries it, and cleans the
taps, and wipes the floor, and puts out soap and
heaps of towels, turns the cold tap on and then
goes along to Ross and says 'Bath's ready, sir.'

Then Ross goes and splashes it all up, and scatters
soap about and swamps the floor, and then, after
breakfast, Brown cleans it just the same all over
again for me, only this time it's the hot tap, and
Nannie comes and says 'Bath's ready, dearie,
hurry up now.'  What would Ross say if Brown
suddenly said, 'Hurry up, now, dearie,' and if he
wouldn't stand it, why do I?

Well, for some reason or other this morning Ross
went along to his bath before Brown called him.
He had on his new dressing-gown.  His taste is
lurid and flamboyant, and Aunt Constance aids
and abets him.  This was a really scrummy one,
dull purple silk, with pink flamingoes.  And Aunt
Constance had had bath shoes made to match with
baby flamingoes on the toes.  She does spoil him
abominably.

Well, Ross, resplendent in his purple and
flamingoes, lounged in a chair and smoked a
cigarette, while Brown put the last polish on the
taps and 'chucked the towels about,' as Ross
expressed it.  Brown was silently absorbed in taps
and Ross in watching him, when, suddenly, the
door was flung wide open and a Spider entered in
a red flannel dressing-gown, rather short, with a
collar that had bits chewed out (I quote my brother,
he means pinked) while its feet were thrust in red
felt shoes.  It had no cap on, but its hair was
screwed into a tight, 'round button on the top,'
like the panjandram, and it was in a temper hot
and hissing.

Ross got up hurriedly and surveyed the apparition,
feeling a little at a disadvantage, with his hair
rough and with pink flamingoes.  Brown stood at
petrified attention by the bath.

'Oh, is it possible,' said the artist, for it was one
of the sisters I told you of, 'is it humanly possible
that this room is *still* occupied?'

'I've only just come,' my brother remarked.

'But that man has been here at least half an
hour,' said the red flannel dressing-gown.

'Have you, Brown?' asked Ross.

'I've had to clean the bath, madam,' said Brown.

'But surely,' said the Spider, 'surely the bath
doesn't need cleaning.  I'm sure Mrs Tremayne
keeps everything most beautifully.  It really is
absurd.  It's the same in the mornings, and at
night, and sometimes before dinner.  The man's
always in here, and I feel the time has come to put
my foot down.  We all pay the same, and baths
are included in the price.'

So Ross, with that courtesy which he can't help
showing to a woman, even if he's furious with her,
said 'I'm extremely sorry, but if you will tell my
man after breakfast what time it is convenient to you
for me to have my bath, I will fit in with you and
will speak to my sister also.  See to it, Brown, will
you?' and he turned away to close the conversation.

But the Spider's conversation was not so easily
closed, and she was just about to begin again.
However, she had bargained without Brown.
Brown had his orders, he had been told to 'see to
it,' and meant to.  Somehow he hustled the little
woman out and, with 'My master is waiting to
have his bath, madam,' he closed the door on the
little spitfire, and Ross exploded comfortably.

After luncheon they gave notice.  'Jolly good
job, too,' says Ross.  But I feel sorry we've annoyed
them, though I shall go in and possess my Naboth's
vineyard with great pride and pleasure.

Ross is only pretty well; he gets a good deal of
pain and is sleeping badly, but he generally manages
to be cheerful, when he can't he goes upstairs and
stays there till the bout is over.

This evening he came into my room to say
'Good-night,' and his mind seemed full of
dressing-gowns.  'Meg,' he demanded, 'is your
dressing-gown red?'

'Yes,' I said, 'the one I'm using at the moment
happens to be red.'

'But is it flannel?'

'No, but it's something quite as thick.  Estelle
thought it would be warmer for me.  It's over
there, if you'd like to see it.'

He picked up the soft crimson thing that Estelle
had made for me when I first landed.

'Why, Meg, it looks like an evening dress.'

'Yes, but it buttons down the front, that's
where the difference is.'

'Do you always button it, then, when you put it on?'

'Oh, always,' I replied, 'don't people usually?'

'I dunno,' he said, 'only this morning she had
got hers sort of draped across her tummy, kept
together with the belt knotted.  When you walk
about the passages in hotels, Meg, don't you wear
a cap or something?'

'My dear child,' I observed, 'where do you think
I was dragged up?'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-VII`:

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   CHAPTER VII

.. vspace:: 2

Fairy hands have been at work.  Instead of a
shining white world all is green again.  There has
been a very rapid thaw.  The frost has gone and
little brooks of melted snow are running down the
lanes and paths.  Tiny green spikes have appeared
in all the garden as if by magic.  There is even a
half-drowned primrose out, telling that spring is
coming very soon this year.

The morning post brought me a letter from
Michael 'written in the mud.'  It contains a most
amazing suggestion.  He asks me to try to find
an old house 'such as his soul loveth' and make a
home.

Oh, how he must have misunderstood my letters
and thought because I frivolled and told him all
our stupid jokes that I am happy.  How can he
imagine I could even contemplate making a home
in England without him when it has been the
dream of our lives to do it together.  Surely he
knows by now that 'Home' for me is just that
particular bit of mud in Flanders in which his dear
feet are embedded, and that any place without
him is exile, that life, till he returns, is merely
marking time.  I don't care if I am talking like a
little Bethel....  Ross thinks it's a topping idea.
Even Nannie didn't help me.  When I told her, all
she said was, 'But of course you will if Master
Michael wants you to.'

I felt, as I sometimes used to as a child, that
'every one's against me,' and I decided to walk
my devils off.

I went downstairs and found Ross reading.

'Going out?' he asked.

'Yes, will you come?'

'No, arm's bothering,' and he took up his book
again.

I went for a long tramp, down the quiet lanes
and through the little spinneys, but there was no
harmony—the old 'washed' feeling wouldn't come.
I slipped into the Intercession Service at the little
church and tried to pray for Ross and Michael and
all the others.  War seems very near in England,
only a few miles off—those guns—that one hears
sometimes in the night.  I thought as I sat in
church of all the death and desolation, the suffering
and the broken hearts and tears.  A great horror
of the war came over me and a great rebellion.
Why does God allow such things?  How can I
think of Him as a beneficent Being when the world
is swamped with cruelty, blood, and separation?
I feel like Tommy Vellacott.  I don't love God
now.  I only believe in Him.

When I got home my feet were soaked and my
throat sore, so I went upstairs early.  I felt better
in bed, and decided that I *would* try to find a house
if it would give Michael the least scrap of happiness.
If he would feel 'less anxious' about me in a house
of our own instead of rooms, why a house it shall
be.  I grew quite excited and interested (as my feet
got warmer), planning the details of our dream—an
old, old house, standing in a big garden
with long, low rooms full of oak furniture, seventeenth
century, for choice, with lots of flowers and
sunshine in the summer, and books and candlelight
and glowing fires for the winter evenings.  But
how awful it would be if, when Michael saw it for
the first time he should say,—

'This the dream house?—what a nightmare!'

Then Ross came in to say good-night.  'Better?'
he queried.

'No, but I'm going to get up to-morrow,' I said
defiantly.

'Are you,' he drawled, as though he hadn't the
faintest interest in the subject, but there was a
look in his eyes somehow I didn't like.  'Why is
that wretched kitten up here again?' he said.  'I
can hear it wheezing,' and he looked under the bed.

'It's me,' I said.

'It's I,' said Ross.

'Oh, have you got it, too?'  (I will not be
reproved for grammar by a twin).

'Are you making that noise for fun, Meg?'

'No, I can't help it,' I said crossly.

'Hadn't you better have one of those things on
made out of a muslin curtain, with hot muck
inside,' he added vaguely, racking his brains for
medical knowledge.  'Can't think what the stuff's
called.'

'No,' I said violently, 'I hadn't better!'

Presently the house grew quiet and I began to
worry over Ross, his bad nights, the constant pain
and the absolute refusal to let any one do anything
for him; he won't have a fire and snaps Brown's
head off if he suggests a doctor.  He was really
angry with me on Saturday because I—oh, well, it's
no use worrying, I reflected, as I mopped my eyes.

Just as I was about to try to compose myself
for slumber, with a little folding of the hands to
sleep, wishing I could drown the kitten, Nannie
came in.  You will hardly believe it when I tell
you that she carried in between two hot plates the
thing that Ross had mentioned, in a muslin curtain.

'Master Ross says,' began Nannie.

'Nannie,' I retorted, and I was furious, 'I simply
will not have that beastly thing on just because
Ross says so.'

'Well,' said Nannie soothingly, 'have it because
I say so, if you'd rather,' and she clapped it on.

And I decided, as she closed the door, that I
should run away at dawn.

But the kitten wouldn't stop, and then I started
choking.  There was dead silence in the house,
so I hoped that Ross was sleeping well for once,
and I buried my head under the bedclothes and
coughed comfortably.

I started up presently with a little shriek to find
a giant in pyjamas making up my fire.

'Sorry I frightened you,' said Ross.  'What
have you got your head buried for, can't you
sleep?'

'No,' I replied.

'But I told you to knock if you wanted me, Meg.'

'I didn't want you,' I said crossly, 'that's why
I didn't knock.'

'You're very difficult to take care of,' said Ross,
surveying me from the foot of the bed.

'Not nearly so difficult as you are,' I retorted, all
the worry of his continued sleepless nights coming
to a head suddenly in my mind, 'you won't let me
do a thing for you.  I cry about you sometimes.'

'You cry about *me*?' said the giant, suddenly
sitting on the edge of the bed.

'Yes,' and I leaned against him; he seemed a
friendly sort of giant at the moment.

'When did you cry last?' he demanded.

'To-night,' and I fumbled for a handkerchief
I didn't really need.

'Why?' asked the giant.

'Because your arm's so bad, you aren't sleeping,
you won't take anything or do anything, or let
any one else do anything for you.  You're making
me perfectly miserable, and as for Sam, you've
been absolutely rotten to him all the week.'

'I told Brown to keep every one out of my room
when I'd got a "go" on, and he let you in on
Saturday.'

'Yes, but Ross,' I said, 'how could he keep me out?'

'He'd had his orders.  I can't be responsible for
any difficulties that may occur in the carrying of
them out,' said Ross obstinately.

'You are hard,' I said.

'Scold away,' grinned Ross.

'No, but you are; you've simply looked through
Brown and locked your door, and been cold to me
for days.'

'Can't stand disobedience in a soldier,' said
Ross, shortly, 'never could.'

'Nor in a sister, Ross?'

But there was no reply.

'Ross,' I exclaimed suddenly, desiring an
armistice, 'I'm sorry.  I won't come in again,
only, if you knew how I worry about you, you'd
let me.  But,' I added, 'I thought when we
embarked on this conversation, that I was
rowing you.'

'I haven't said a word,' protested Ross.

'No, I know you haven't, but conscience makes
the head uneasy when it wears a crown.'

'Are you feverish, darling?' said Ross anxiously.

'No, but I get quotations mixed at times.  Will
you forgive me?' I said childishly.

So we smoked the pipe of peace with great
contentment, smoked the calumet, the peace pipe,
and I said, 'My brother, listen,—

   |  "See the smoke rise slowly, slowly,
   |  First a single line of darkness,
   |  Then a denser, bluer vapour,
   |  Then a snow-white cloud unfolding,
   |  Like the tree tops of the forest.
   |  Ever rising, rising, rising,
   |  Till it touched the top of heaven,"
   |  Till it broke against the ceiling,
   |  Till I sneezed.'
   |

'Meg, I'm sure you're feverish.'

'I'm not.'

'Well, the only thing I've understood that you've
said lately was the sneeze.'

'And that,' I observed with pride, 'was the
original bit.  I always felt I could be a poet if I
tried.  Now I'm going to finish rowing you.'

'But I thought we'd smoked the pipe of peace, Meg.'

'Oh, that——' I said.

'How like a woman.  Fire away, then, and get
it off your chest.'

So I fired away and got off all the wrongs of days.

'If you weren't so small,' said Ross, when at last
he got a word in, 'I shouldn't feel so inclined to
bully you.'

'But that's an awful thing to say.  Why, you
never ought to hit a man who's smaller than
yourself.'

'Looks as if my moral nature is decaying and
I seem to be a fair and average all-round beast,'
said Ross, with gloom.  'I didn't mean to hurt
you, darling.  Sorry, little 'un.  I'll try to be
different,' he promised, as he used when he was
naughty as a boy.

'Have some coffee, Meg?  Brown put some in
my thermy.'

'Yes.  I will if you will,' and because my brother
was 'trying to be different' he took a cup himself.

'Well, it's time you went to sleep,' remarked the
giant, and got up to go.

Outside the door, as he went out, I heard Brown
say, 'Can't you sleep, sir,' and then something
about 'no dressing-gown with that cold on you.'

'Oh, dry up,' said Ross wrathfully, really trying
to be different, 'you're as bad as a wet nurse.  Go
to bed and stop there, or I'll sack you, Sam.'

So I knew Brown was forgiven, too.

When I woke up next time it was getting light.
I fumbled for my watch.  It said the hour was
twelve, so I knew it must be seven, or it might
be eight—the hour hand will slip round, though I
can always tell the minutes, which is what one
usually wants to know.

Then there was a knock upon my door.

'This,' I thought, 'is my repentant brother.
Now, after last night, I must remember to be
firm, but kind, and so help him to be different,'
and I called 'Come in.'

But an icicle in shirt sleeves entered that I'd
seen several times before.

'Meg,' it said, 'you're not to get up.'

'My dear sir,' I said to it (telling myself that I
was not afraid of icicles), 'I hadn't the slightest
intention of doing such a thing for at least an
hour.'

'Not all day,' said the icicle, and as I opened
my lips, intending to be firm, but kind, it said in
a voice cold as a glacier just before the dawn,
'Don't argue, it's quite settled, Margaret.'

'But,' I objected, assuring myself again that
firm kindness was the *only* way with icicles, 'you've
got exactly the same cold, and you're up.  Sauce
for a goose ought to be sauce for a gander.'

Suddenly a rapid thaw set in and the icicle
subsided into a mere puddle on the floor, and my
brother answered, 'Sauce *from* a goose is all I
know about,' and there we left it.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-VIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII

.. vspace:: 2

It took two days to drown that kitten, but now
I'm up again and out, and to-day I went to Tarnley,
with the permission of my gracious keeper, 'if I
drove both there and back.'  As it was sunny, and
mercies are strictly rationed just at present, I
accepted the offer and went to all the places I had
meant to go to first, did a lot of shopping, and
finally interviewed one of the house agents.

I was quite clear and definite in my requirements—I
wanted to *buy* an *old* house; so of course
every one he sent me to was *red brick*, *modern*, and
*to let*.

I went home and groused to Ross, and announced
that the only really satisfactory way to find a
suitable dwelling was to walk the length and
breadth of England, and when you saw the house
you wanted knock at the door and beguile the
owner into selling it to you, and that I intended
to adopt this plan and to begin my pilgrimage
shortly.

Ross, as usual, was rude about it.

'Haven't you discovered all these years, you little
ass, that agents are a race apart?' said he;
'their minds are controlled by the law of opposites.
Now your heart, Meg, is set on a house, ancient
and mellowed with years, with long, low rooms
and beams, and an old-world garden full of
wallflowers, phlox and herbs and perennials and——'

'But, Ross——'

'Don't interrupt me, Meg; consequently you
must tell the agent that you desire a new
up-to-date dwelling with a small garden overlooked
on either side (since we are cheerful souls and love
the company of our fellows).  Then they would
give you orders to view old houses with little
latticed windows and winding stairs.  Methinks
if you said you *must* have lincrusta and white
enamel you might even get oak panelling.'

After dinner Ross departed upstairs, said he
had things to do and then he was going to bed.

To bed?  To walk his room all night, with Brown,
unbeknown to my brother, pacing up and down
the passage.

I sat by my fire and read.  At one o'clock, Ross
knocked me up.  As I went into the corridor
Brown barred his door.

'I daren't, ma'am.  Please don't ask me.  Not
after last time, miss.'

'Let her in, Brown,' cried Ross.  'I knocked
her up, you ass!  Worrying?' he asked me
laconically as I went in.

'Yes.'

'Like to make tea then? got such a rotten "go"
on, Meg.'

And then he fainted, and I called to Brown.
He got his master into bed, while I flew round for
brandy.

'Give me some water,' said my reviving brother.

'No, I won't,' said Brown, 'you'll take the
brandy, Master Ross, or I'll thrash you like I did
that day in Hickley Woods when you fell and cut
your knee and sprained your ankle, and tried to
prevent me going for the doctor.'

Ross was so dumbfounded that he took the
brandy meekly.

'Now these aspirins,' said Brown, 'and I'm going
to light the fire.  The room is like an ice-house.
I'm about fed up.'

When he arose from the fireplace he was
once again the suave, impassive servant.  'I should
wish to give a month's warning, sir.  I don't seem
able to give you satisfaction.'  And there was a
desolating silence.  'Anything more I can do for
you to-night, sir?'

'Yes,' said Ross, 'stop playing the goat.'

But Brown's face remained hard and impassive.

'Want me to eat humble pie, I suppose,' said
Ross, and surveyed his servant as if he had just
suddenly seen him.

'Yes, sir, I think it would be a good thing.'

'Well, then, I've been a devil all the week.'

But Brown still waited.

'Want more pie?' asked my erring brother.

'That's as you feel, sir,' said Brown.

So Ross, with the air of a man who thought it
a pity to spoil the ship of repentance for a ha'porth
of grace, said 'Sorry.'

'Don't name it, sir,' said Brown, and I so
rejoiced over the sinner that repented that I forgot
to remind him to say 'punchbowl.'

Just as Brown went through the door, Ross
called out, 'Got another place, Sam?'

Sam suddenly came to life again.  'Will you see
the doctor in the morning?'

'Oh, have it your own way,' growled Ross.

'Then I've got a place,' said Sam.

'Get us some tea, then,' my brother ordered,
'and come and have a cup yourself.'

'Certainly not, sir, with Miss Meg—Margaret,
I mean,' he said, getting deeper into the mire.

'Do you usually call my sister by her Christian
name?'

'No, sir, but you worry me so, I don't know
half the time what I'm a-saying.'

'Well, I'm a-saying now,' said his autocratic
master, 'that it's time the tea was here, and bring
three cups.  I want to talk about the Hickley
Woods.  You've got a rotten temper, Sam.'

'Yes, sir, you can't touch pitch,' said Sam,
firing the last shot.

So victory is not always to the strong.

'Oh, what a chap,' said Ross.

We spent a warm and pleasant hour talking
birds, and fish, and rabbits, and the years slipped
away and we were back again in the Hickley
Woods—Ross, Miss Meg, and Sam.

After Brown had departed with the tea-cups,
Ross said, 'Meg, do you think I'm weak?'

'Well, darling,' I replied, 'you are sure to feel so
after fainting, but if you take care, you——'

'But I don't mean my body, Meg.'

'We are all sinners,' I said, 'but if you would like
to see a clergyman in the morning, I'll——'

'How can you be so aggravating; I don't mean
my soul, either.  I want to talk about my Will.'

'I thought you had made it ages ago, but I'll
wire for the lawyer in the morning.'

'Oh, Meg, how you do exasperate a chap.'

'Well, what do you mean?' I giggled.

'I mean my will power.  Do you think I'm weak?'

'About as weak as Michael,' I replied.  'Why?'

'Because,' said my brother seriously, 'doesn't
it seem an awful thing that a chap my size can't
manage a chap his.'

'But there's only three inches between you, and
he is six months older.'

'Yes, but three inches is three inches, and what's
six months, Meg?'

'You say forty minutes is enough when you
boss me.'

'Oh, twins are different, but with Brown I get
along all right when I take my stand on the King's
Regulations.  But when he brings in the Hickley
Woods I go to water.'

'No, to brandy.'

'Oh, rub it in,' said Ross, and then because he
was so quaint and sweet and I loved him, and he
had fainted, and because the lion seemed very
tame, I forebore to tease him further and was
really nice, kissed him once and petted him a little,
and then when I got up to go he said,—

'Pity you aren't always as dutiful as that.'

'Dutiful!' I shrieked.  'Oh, what a word,' and
so we parted coldly after all.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-IX`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX

.. vspace:: 2

And the doctor's verdict is 'Two days in bed and
bromide.  First dose now.'

'I'll stay in bed,' said Ross, with the air of a man
conferring a great favour, 'I'll not take drugs.'

'I'll get it down,' said Brown to the doctor, as
he saw him to the car, 'somehow,' he added grimly.

'Sam,' I inquired, 'how are you going to get it down?'

'Can't imagine, miss.  After last night he won't
stand much.  Well, it was a bit thick.'

'Sam, do you think if your knee gave out and it
hurt you to keep standing when you argued, that
it might have weight?'

'Can but try, miss.'

So Brown's knee, of course, has given out.
They are a happy pair, one in bed and the other
with his leg up on a chair, talking woods and
shooting, fishing, and birds' eggs, and they're
smoking—how they smoke!  I think the bromide's
swallowed.  There's a contented look in Sam's
eyes and a 'Oh-well-stretched-a-point-for-once,' in
my dear brother's.

So I proceeded to carry out my patent plan of
finding houses and had a delightful and exciting
morning.  It was a lovely day, the hedges were a
soft promise of green, and the bright sunshine
and some saucy robins made a brave pretence of
summer.  I rambled down all kinds of little lanes
and by-paths, but never a house did I see to suit
me, till at last I chanced on Lynford, a little place
I fell in love with at first sight and which I am sure
is after Michael's own heart.

The village is built on the slope of a hill, with a
little church on the summit and charming old
world cottages clustered together in picturesque
confusion just below.

Alas, the cottages were quite small ones, with
only four or five rooms at most, and so not
practicable.  The last house in the village was a great
surprise.  It was larger than the others, with
quaint little diamond windows and a glorious old
red roof, and lots of creepers climbing over, which
would make it in the autumn a thing of flaming
beauty.

In the flower borders crocuses and snowdrops
were already peeping, and the porch was aflame
with yellow winter jasmine.  The view was superb,
for the hill sloped steeply from the house, and at
my feet lay beautiful water meadows all in flood
after the snow, with the ruins of an old abbey in
the near distance.

Without stopping to think of anything but the
fact that it was the kind of habitation I was looking
for, I boldly walked up to the front door and rang
the bell.  Here my courage, which I had thought
was screwed to the sticking point, began, in the
most horrible manner, to trickle out of my boots,
but before I could escape an elderly and severe
domestic opened the door and glared at me as if
I wanted to sell her something.

I inquired if I might see the owner on a matter
of business.  She hesitated and, after looking me
well up and down, most reluctantly said, 'I'll see.'

She departed down the old flagged passage,
leaving me on the mat with my last shred of
courage in tatters and my knees a jelly.  After a
minute or two she returned and said, 'The master
will see you,' and if ever a woman's sour visage
said 'More fool he,' that woman's did.

As the last moments of a drowning man are
crammed with the recollections of a lifetime, so all
the silly, impulsive things I have done in my life
crowded on me as I followed down that stone
passage.  Why, oh, why did I have an Irish
grandmother to lead me into this scrape?  What
on earth could I say to 'the master' that wouldn't
sound the most appalling impertinence?

I entered his presence rather more quickly than
I meant to, as I fell down a small step.

I looked across the charming room, and by the
bright wood fire was an old gentleman seated at
breakfast at eleven o'clock in the morning.

'Good-morning,' I said, 'I'm afraid I'm rather early.'

'Not at all,' said he.  'I'm afraid I'm rather late.
Have some breakfast?'

'No, thank you, I haven't come to call.'

'Oh, he replied, 'I thought you had.'

'No,' and my words began to tumble over one
another in my agitation, 'that is to say, not in the
ordinary sense of the word, but I came—I hope
you won't mind—I hope you won't think it awful
cheek, but now I am inside your house I feel it is,
though outside it seemed the most ordinary thing
to do, but the fact is I am looking—oh——'  I
broke off as the appallingness of the situation
came upon me afresh.  'Promise you will not be
offended, but that you will take my visit in the
spirit in which it is intended.'

'Is this to be an offer of marriage, my dear young
lady?'

'Oh, no,' I gasped, 'much worse, it's an offer for
your house.'

'Aha, aha,' said he, 'I thought I heard the tenth
commandment crack as you fell down the step.'

'Crack,' I exclaimed, 'it's broken into a million
pieces.'

'Well, I think that we had better see what we
can do to patch it up again, as it's really quite a
nice commandment, and breaking it is apt to cause
distressing situations.  Sit down and have some
breakfast and tell me why you are coveting your
neighbour's house and if you want my men and
maid servants, oxen and she asses, too?'

'Not your maidservant, anyway,' I said, and his
eyes twinkled.  He was so friendly and kind that
I sat down, and over tea and toast, which he insisted
I should have, I told him about Michael and of our
passion for old houses, and Ross, and the Gidger,
and indeed all about everything.

'Ah,' he said, 'so you love old houses.  Well,
I sympathise, but this one will not be to let until
I am carried out feet first.'

'God forbid that I should ever have it, then,'
I said, and got up to go, 'and it's dear of you not
to have been offended.'

'Offended!' he laughed, as he said good-bye,
'I was never so entertained in all my life.'

When I got home I went up to tell Ross
about it, and he remarked as I finished the
tale,—

'Well, there's to be no more house-hunting on
those lines, Meg; you might have been most
frightfully insulted.  It's all right as it's happened;
Michael would be simply furious with me for letting
you do it if he knew.'

'But I told you I was going to,' I expostulated.

'It never occurred to me that you meant it.
Of course, I thought you were fooling, you little
idiot.'

And Ross did one of his atrocious lightning
changes.  Instead of a ragging brother one was
merely 'fighting' with there was a man whose
'Sorry, darling, but I mean you mustn't do it
again' closed the discussion, for all that it was
very gently said.

Then he kissed me and said, 'Oh, Meg, you are
so sweet and funny when you're "meek."'

As a rule people who bully me are not allowed to
kiss me—but—my brother was ill in bed!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-X`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X

.. vspace:: 2

Ross seemed fairly well this morning, and, having
announced 'Time's up,' said that *he* would go to
the house agents at Tarnley to-day, and that if I
liked I might come too.

I had previously said to Sam,—

'Don't you think another day in bed would do
him good?'

'Not a doubt about it, miss,' said Sam, 'but I
couldn't work it: thought we should have hardly
lasted out the time as it was.  We've drove him
a bit hard lately.  Better not press him too much,
miss, he don't take kindly even to the snaffle.'

So we sallied forth to call on Messrs Cardew
Thompkins.

My brother was in one of his mad moods and
announced that he should pretend we were just
married, and that I was to look as shy and modest
as my brazen countenance would allow, and to
blush at intervals if I could.  An elegant young
man, with a waist, received us with a bow, begged
us to be seated and state our requirements.

'Take a pew, Florrie,' said Ross to me.  I took
one and hoped I looked shy and modest.

'I want,' said Ross, bursting with newly married
pride and importance, 'to rent a small house for
myself and my er——'

The agent coughed discreetly and said, 'Quite so.'

My face by this time was perfectly crimson with
suppressed laughter.  I hope Mr Cardew Thompkins
thought it was shy blushes.

'The house must be as small as possible,'
continued Ross, 'and quite new, with no garden, as
my wife doesn't like slugs, do you, lovey?  It must
be in a row, or at most, semi-detached, as my er——'

'Quite so,' said the agent again.

'My wife is nervous at nights.  We haven't been
married very long,' said the incorrigible Ross in
a burst of confidence.

'We should like it opposite a railway station,
if possible, and we want white paint—enamel,
I mean—and fireplaces with tiled hearths, nice
cheerful wall-papers, and a dodo in the hall.'

'Dado,' I murmured.

'What, sweetie?' said Ross, 'what did you say,
my pet?'

I could have murdered him.

'But it must be quite a new house,' said Ross,
as I didn't answer, 'as you don't like beetles, do
you, duckie?  We don't even mind if it isn't
quite finished, because——'  Here Ross's powers
of invention mercifully failed him.

'Because,' said the agent, 'then you could choose
your own decoration.  I quite understand.'

I was pulp by this time, and as I was in imminent
danger of exploding I retired to the window and
made curious noises into my handkerchief, while
the house agent looked through a number of small
cards in a little box.

'You're in a draught, my pretty,' said Ross,
'come and sit near to hubby, while Mr Cardew
Thompkins writes us the order to view.'

I came lest worse should befall me, and Ross
tried to hold my hand but didn't succeed.

'There's a little old house out at Crosslanes,'
began the agent—Ross nudged me violently.

'Also one at Stoke, which is slightly larger and
older.'

'It's beginning to work,' whispered Ross.

'I will give you orders to view both of these.'

'Are they near the railway?'

'I haven't actually seen them myself,' said Mr
Cardew Thompkins, 'but I think from the description
of your requirements they are just what you
need.  Good-morning.'

If he had looked out of his office window a
moment later he would have seen Ross and me
with our handkerchiefs stuffed in our mouths
fleeing down the road till we got round the corner
out of sight.

'Oh,' sobbed Ross, 'do stop.  I told you so, but
it's worked better than I thought.  Read this:—

.. vspace:: 2

'"St JULIANS.—Very desirable gentleman's
country residence."'

.. vspace:: 2

'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, is *not* a 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:—

.. vspace:: 2

'"10 bed and dressing-rooms, 5 reception
rooms, 6 acres of pleasure gardens, stabling
and coachhouse, usual domestic offices.  For
sale only."

.. vspace:: 2

'Here's another:—

.. vspace:: 2

'"Charming country cottage for sale, 5 miles
from Whittington station, combines old-world
charm with every modern convenience,
capable of being added to."

.. vspace:: 2

'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, *do* I 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."'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-XI`:

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   CHAPTER XI

.. vspace:: 2

The Gidger came in from a drive bursting with
excitement and importance.

'Muvver, *I've* found 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's *the* house; 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 was *not* his 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 things *you* wanted,' 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.'  *How* I would
like that.  It had eight little devils carved on it and
the ninth was the person who sat in it!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-XII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII

.. vspace:: 2

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 simply *got* to 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, but
*quite* firmly,—

'You're going to do nothing of the kind.'

'I quite definitely *am*,' I said.

So then there was a little gust of temper.

'Oh, *do* stop 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 you
*do* like 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 blue *would* have 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 real *old* chintz 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 is *Tench*.  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
Stench *and* a 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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-XIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII

.. vspace:: 2

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:—

.. vspace:: 2

'I am sending you a copy, painted by a pal of
mine, of the Mediæval Portrait of Queen Ediva.
I expect you never heard of the lady, Little 'un,
but she was the second wife of Edward the Elder,
A.D. 961.  Do try to remember that date.  She was
a great benefactress to Christ Church Priory, which
I suppose you know is Canterbury Cathedral.  In
the picture you will see she is dressed in her royal
robes and crown.  Notice the beautiful jewelled
and enamelled morse which fastens her ermine-lined
cloak.  The original is painted on wood and
is presumably of the latter part of the fourteenth
century.  It is signed I.P.F., and if he's the chap
I think he is, the date will be about 1392.  You can
hang it in the dining room of your ridiculous cottage.
Why don't you say what the date of it is, instead
of jawing about the creepers and leaded windows,
which I expect are modern.'

.. vspace:: 2

Alas, there are no old deeds, so I do not know
the date.

There was a letter from Aunt Constance, such
a sad one.  She asks me if I would like the Manor
House nursery furniture for the Gidger.  She has
been saving it for her grandchildren, but now that
Eustace has finally decided, there will never be
any little folk to use the pretty things.  Ross
ejaculates at intervals, after reading the letter,—

'Oh, my hat!  I simply couldn't, and when he
could fight, too!'

No, I don't think the monastic life is the one for
Ross.

So poor Aunt Constance, being a soldier's
daughter, eats her heart out because her Eustace
cannot see his way to fight and pray.  Well, it's
a funny throw-back.

Aunt Amelia acknowledged my letter telling
her of my plans in thoroughly characteristic fashion.
There is a good bit about the Devil in her epistle.
She thinks 'one's days might better be occupied
these solemn times than in amassing possessions
and lands, marrying and giving in marriage';
but Michael and I are married, and it's only one
house, and as to land, two acres and a cow is
considered a minimum, and I've left out the cow.
She 'hopes that the Vicar is faithful, and wears a
black gown,' that the Gidger is showing signs of
grace, and that I have been able to purge from
the child's young mind the recollection of that
dreadful recitation, taught her by some ungodly
friend of her poor afflicted nephew.

'Does she mean me?' asked Ross indignantly.

'Yes, you're the afflicted one, and Captain
Everard is the person who——'

'Well, old Everard does know some tales, I
admit,' said Ross, 'but go on.'

'Oh, I can't bear to read any more of it
out.'  I threw the letter at him.

'Why does she always spell devil with a capital
"D"?  I should have thought the smallest she
could write was good enough for that old beast,'
remarked my brother as he handed the missive
back.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-XIV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV

.. vspace:: 2

I don't know if the day in London was too much
for Ross, but he had a bad 'go' of pain in the night
and cussed with great enthusiasm after breakfast
because he couldn't light his own pipe.  Somehow
he cannot strike a match with his left hand, though
heaps of men do it, I believe.  Half an hour after
the outburst Sam appeared with a vase filled with
spills.

'Why these funny things?' said Ross, picking
one up.

'Spills, sir, light them at the fire, sir; can't get
matches.'

'Oh,' said Ross, and tried one.  'Why, Sam, this
is a brain wave.  I can light my own pipe.'

'Can you, sir,' said Sam, going away contented.
He is so thoughtful in those little ways.  He gives
Ross such a very perfect service.  Sam never
attempts to serve two masters.  He is wholehearted
for his one.

After lunch Ross said that he didn't feel up to
going out, and that his "Rev. Mother" wanted him
to lie down and take some soothing syrup.

'And are you going to?' I asked.

'Of course I'm not.  Do you think I always do
what Brown says.  The 'Rev. Mother's' the one that
will do the lying down,' said my brother grimly.

So I went over to the Gidger's cottage and found
it full of ladders, paint-pots, pails of white-wash,
workmen knocking down partitions, while 'Uncle
John,' his hair and whiskers bristling like a wild
man of the woods, whirls in and out like a dog at a
fair, glorying in all the mess and confusion.  Now
that the house is mine, I go round anxiously and
point out the flaws and cracks in the walls, and
'Uncle John' says soothingly, 'Oh, yes, mum, it
only wants a bit o' mortar, it won't cost you much,'
'a bit o' mortar' is his panacea for all ills.  He
says the roof is sound except over the powdering
closet, which may give trouble, no doubt 'a bit o'
mortar will set it right.'

The two partitions are down and the doorways
unblocked so that I can now walk through my
entire domain without going out in the garden,
over the fence and in at the other front door.
All the rooms have had one coat of distemper and
the drawing-room is finished.  The pale cream
walls are quite delightful and cry out for
water-colours in gold mounts and frames, the oak floors
have been beautifully polished, and joy, there are
three Persian rugs in the Depository.  To-day I
bought a pair of plain old iron dogs to rest the logs
on in the open fireplace.  The casement curtains
are to be made of the anemone besprinkled chintz
with frills along the top.  But, alas, the little
curtains cut into more yards of stuff than one
would think, and so I must have others in the
bedrooms.  I went into a shop to-day and asked
the man to show me dimity.

'Dimity,' said he with a supercilious stare,
'*dimity*, why, good gracious, it's a hundred years
old, madam.'

'But my house,' I said with quiet scorn, 'must
be at least two hundred and fifty.'

I bought a seventeenth century settee and
some deep chairs when I was up in town.  They
have loose covers made of chintz with a design of
birds and baskets printed from the original old
wood blocks.

The drawing-room is such a jolly room, very
light and bright, with three big windows facing
north and east and south.  It has only one beam
going across the ceiling and none of the sombre
dark beauty of the dining-room, so I feel I may
be flippant there.  I shall have heaps of colour
in the covers and curtains.  There are a few
delightful things of daddy's for this room—a
lovely old mahogany corner cupboard with latticed
doors, and some bits of china to go in it, bowls and
jugs and funny old cups without handles.  There
are also three beautiful chairs with rounded backs
filled in with lattice work painted in black and
gold; the gold is very faint and worn in places.
The seats are cane and the front legs very spindly,
the kind of chair one's heaviest male visitor will
inevitably choose.  I think they must be French,
they are so elegant.  No one should sit in them
but an old gentleman with powdered hair, delicate
lace ruffles, and a little cane, and his lady opposite
must have a small patch box, there is one that I
can lend her if she likes.  None of my men folk
will look well in them, unless perhaps my father,
in his robes and full lawn sleeves.  And I bought
an old mahogany bureau with deep drawers and
little hidy holes and secret places in it.  It was
really most expensive, but I asked Ross, and he
said Michael's balance at the bank was so indecent
that he thought I really must.  I don't think we
shall want much else; I like space and Michael
needs plenty; he will only fall over things if I
crowd the rooms too much, and complain that
there is nowhere for his legs.

I forgot to say there is a great cupboard
in this room with battened shelves for fruit.  (I
told you the domestic offices were all mixed up),
and there are Cox's orange apple trees in the garden.
I seem to see a man who will get up suddenly and
leave the fire on a winter's night and hie him to
the cupboard 'for a map,' but his pockets will bulge
suspiciously on his return, and there will be a kind
of 'ain't going to be no core' look in his eyes.
Then he will lean back in the chair covered with
the bird and basket chintz and blatantly and
vulgarly eat a Cox's, skin and all, regardless of the
fact that he's already had at least one properly at
dinner with finger bowls and silver knives and
plates.  Then I shall say in righteous indignation,
'Where's the map?' and he will say, 'Why, in my
pocket, can't you see it sticking out?'  'I can see
something round,' I say severely.  'Well, what
would you have?' he drawls, 'the world's round,
isn't it?  It follows that the maps should be round,
too.'  And he picks up his book again and reads.
But I, because the flesh is weak and the man
tempted me too far, and because his second apple
looks so good, I shall shriek out, 'Oh, now I know
how Adam felt, Michael, you old serpent, give me
one.'  'You can't eat maps,' he says.  'Oh, yes,
I can,' I say, and snuggle down beside the fire and
lean against his knee and munch in jolly comradeship,
while the tale of cores mounts steadily and
sizzles with delightful splutterings in the fire.
Ah, well!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-XV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XV

.. vspace:: 2

Everything now is signed, sealed, and delivered.
Gidger's cottage really belongs to me.

I have engaged a most enchanting charwoman:
she cleans silver and brass better than any one
else in the world, and polishes furniture till it
dazzles, but she can't scrub, she has an 'inside.'  It
is of deep and lasting interest to her, and must
be such a consolation on a wet day when one wants
a hobby in the house.  She is never tired of talking
of it.  It has a way of cropping up in every
conversation, like the head of Charles the First in
Mr Dick's memorial.  Ross calls her 'Our Lady
of Ventre,' which sounds more like a Belgian
cathedral than it really is!  She is very emaciated
and her looks are more 'delicate' than her
conversation.

'You see, mum, it's my inside,' she says; 'what
I've suffered no one don't know but those what
'as it; why, one hoperation alone they took out——'
but I spare you.  So I have a second woman to
scrub, and between them they are getting the
house like a new pin, and it will burst upon the
staff in all its pristine and primeval cleanness.
I am a little afraid of the staff.  I understand that
English servants in these days need 'standing up
to.'  I can manage a man all right, having had a
vast experience, and Ross keeps my hand in, but
a woman—how does one stand up to her?

To-day the saucepans and baking tins arrived.
I was thrilled, so was 'Our Lady of Ventre,' she
helped me to unpack them while the other lady
scrubbed the shelves.

'Could you wash them, do you think?' I asked.

'Oh, yes, mum, as long as I don't do no scrubbing;
you see, it's my——' but I changed the conversation
quickly by asking how her husband was.

'I 'ad a field card yesterday' (I wish I had), she
answered, ''e was all right then; my 'usband's in
the calvery, in the calvery 'e is, always was a one
for 'orses.'

'So is mine,' I said.

'Fond of hall dumb hanimals, my 'usband is.'

'Ah, a kind man,' I answered.

''E is that,' she said, waving the lid of a saucepan
at me, 'never laid a 'and on me or any of the
children, and what I've cost 'im in doctors you
never would believe; you see, it's my inside, mum,'
and she took a header into it, which I was powerless
to prevent.  'Why, when I first went out walkin'
with 'im, mum, only nineteen I was at the time,
I got such a hawful pain in my inside they took me
to the 'orsepital, took me kidney right out they did,
never thought I would 'ave lived they didn't.
Me young man, 'im what's me 'usband now, you
understand, mum, 'e come to see me when I began
to git over it a bit; fair upset 'e was when the
sister told 'im about me kidney.  I says to 'im,
"Alb," I says, "I'm sure if we gets married I shall
cost you a hawful lot in doctors, and as I lay 'ere,"
I said, "I've thought it's 'ardly fair to expect a
man to feel the same to 'is young woman when she
ain't got all 'er orgins, and if you feel you'd rather
'ave some other young lady, why, say so now,"
I says, and I cried, I did, I was that weak and low,
for I thought a deal of Alb, I did, and I didn't want
to lose 'im, mum.'

'"Liza," 'e says, "don't never talk like that
again, my gal, I'd rather 'ave you with no hinside
than any other young lady what's got all her
guts."  Always one was Alb to speak 'is mind, and 'e fair
blubbed, 'e did, 'e was that upset, and then the
nurse come along again and sent 'im off, but I
never forgot it, mum' (I shouldn't have either),
'and, as I say, I've never 'ad an unkind word from
'im.  'Elped with the 'ousework, too, many a time,
and always lights the kitchen fire and brings me up
a cup of tea, 'e does, of a morning, suppose that's
why I miss 'im so now 'e's in France,' and a tear
splashed down into the saucepan she had started
washing.

Oh, it was really very sweet: the little woman's
eyes were all alight with love at the remembrance
of her Alb's renunciation of her 'orgin,' which,
after all, was inspired by the same divine spark
which caused Dante to adore his Beatrice, Jacob
to serve fourteen years for Rachel, and Elizabeth
to cry out to Robert,—

   |  'How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.
   |  . . . . . . I love thee with the breath,
   |  Smiles, tears of all my life! and if God choose,
   |  I shall but love thee better after death.'
   |

I nearly forgot to say that the workpeople are
out of all the rooms, except the servants' bedrooms,
so we are able to make a start arranging furniture.
Really, there isn't time to breathe, but when it is
finished Michael will perhaps come home.  Oh,
the happiness of seeing him walk up to the front
door, of taking him round the rooms, of introducing
him to all the dear old things, of showing him the
garden.  I can't think about it, I cannot bear the
separation bravely if I do—and for five days I
have had no letter.

The weather is delightful for going to and fro
from Fernfold.  It is warmer, and there is a shade of
green over the garden.  Snowdrops and a few early
primroses make a show of bloom and great fat buds
are coming on the lilac trees.  Soon there will be
violets under the hedges.  My lines are fallen unto
me in pleasant places.  Each morning Ross and I
walk over to the cottage with sandwiches and
Cornish pasties, eggs and things, and coffee hot as
hot in thermos flasks.  The two chars meet us there
and Nannie and the Gidger come sometimes for
tea.  We all go home tired but happy in the bus
at five o'clock.  The General Public will be relieved
to know that up to now the horse has not succumbed
to any other fits on my account!

To-day we arranged the hall.  Three sides of
it are panelled with black oak.  There are large
red flagstones for a floor and a wide window looking
out across a bit of lawn into a little wood already
pierced with bluebell spikes.  Amongst the family
things there is an old deal settle painted black, and
this and a spinning wheel now stand beside the
open fire, and where there is no panelling on the
walls, I've stood an ancient dresser and filled its
shelves with plates and dishes, made of stoneware,
blue and gold.  There are cups to match as well
upon the hooks, and on the board below a naval
copper rum jug Ross dug up from somewhere, and
some copper bowls and pans.  The carved oak
chest now stands beneath the window, and there
are other things besides which you shall see if you
like to come and call on me!  And then, although
it looked so nice it lacked the feel of Michael, and
because I am a very foolish woman I hung some
caps and a coat of his upon the hooks just by the
door, and flung a pipe and matches and a riding
whip upon the table, and pretended that he had
just come in and said, 'Lunch ready, old lady,
what's the pudden?' and was gone upstairs for a
moment followed by a trail of dogs.  Then because
he hadn't, and his things only increased the
desolation, and because I have not had a letter
for five days, I wept copiously into the aforesaid
coat, and made a wet patch on the sleeve.  Ross,
passing unexpectedly, caught me with wet eyes,
so I told him that the smell of Harris tweed always
had, did, and would make my eyes water, which
was the best excuse I could make at such short
notice.  This statement my brother received with
the tact of an archangel, merely remarking as he
went out that he knew exactly what I meant.
Some things made his eyes run, for example, pepper
and onions, and measles in the early stages.  He
returned soon after and said,—

'Meg, I want my lunch.'

'But you can't possibly eat your lunch at
half-past twelve, Ross.'

'Can't I?  You try me.  Nature abhors a vacuum,
come on, I'm starving.  Now,' said he, as he stood,
a great tall thing with his back to the fire, 'you're
going to have a long rest this afternoon.'

'Indeed, I'm not, I've simply stacks to do.'

'This afternoon and every afternoon,' continued
Ross, ignoring my remark.  'Michael says I'm
letting you do too much, you're tired out and it's
got to be stopped, I've got to read the Riot Act
and then the list of crimes.'

'I should have thought the crimes came first,'
I said.

'They have,' replied my brother grimly.  'Been
reading in bed?' he asked abruptly.

'Yes, I haven't been able to sleep the last three
nights, and it's no good, I simply must work, I
can't do nothing with the news so bad and Michael
in the thick of all that hell.  Work all day and
reading at night stop me thinking, and keeps me
sane, so don't ask me to do less, Ross.'

'I don't "ask" you,' he said, and there was a
horrid little silence.

One of the masters at Harrow once said to
daddy, 'Don't mistake your boy, in spite of his
wild spirits, his fun and charm and fascination,
there's iron underneath.'  The iron has a way of
slipping up at times; it was uppermost just then,
floating merrily, like the borrowed axe, and where
was the prophet to whom I could go for rescue and
say, 'Alas, Master.'

'You're too thin,' he began again, and then he
pulled a letter out of his pocket and said, 'I don't
really know any one who can express himself more
clearly than Michael, once he really starts.  I've
had a regular jawing to-day from him for letting
you get overtired—he——'

'Oh, Ross,' I interrupted, getting up hurriedly
and clutching at his sleeve, 'have you had a letter
from Michael to-day?'

'Yes, and another yesterday; why, what's the
matter, kid?'

'Oh, why didn't you tell me?'

'It never occurred to me,' he said, 'Michael
only wrote yesterday about money matters, and
about you to-day; you hear from him every day
yourself, don't you?'

'But I haven't had a letter for nearly a week, Ross.'

'Why on earth didn't you tell me, then,' he
said, sitting down beside me on the settle.

'It's such a small worry compared with other
people's, but I've been so dreadfully anxious.'

'You poor little scrap,' he said, and the cry
which he had interrupted earlier in the morning
I finished on his shoulder comfortably.

'What ridiculous handkerchiefs women use,' he
remarked presently, exchanging my wet crumpled
ball for his nice big, cool, dry one.  'Some chap
said that men must work and women must weep,
and you'd think that the sex that did the weeping
would go in for the larger handkerchiefs, but I
suppose you can't expect a female thing to be
consistent.  I shall have to ask our Lady of Ventre
to bring a mop if you don't stop soon, and it'll be
so bad for her inside, Meg.'

'How can you be so absurd,' I said, cheering up
a bit, 'and I'm not a female thing.'

'You're a very provoking one,' he replied, 'and if
there's another interval in Michael's letters, I'm to
be told.'

'What does Michael say?' I asked.

'I'm to be told,' he repeated, tilting up my chin.

'So you said before,' I answered, trying to take
his hand away, 'but I don't want to worry you
with all my woes, you've got enough of your own.'

'My dear child, I could have told you two days
ago that as I had heard from Michael his letters
to you were only hung up in the post, and you
would have been spared all this needless worry.
Are you going to tell me in future, or must I order
Nannie to bring me all your letters first?' and he
tilted my chin still higher.

'I will tell you,' I said weakly, leaning up against
him, it seemed the only way to stop him looking
at me, 'What does Michael say?'

'That the Power of Attorney he gave me to
manage his affairs is now extended to his wife,
that there's to be no more reading in bed, no more
rackety days in London.  Blows me up sky high
for letting you work all day and sew miles of little
frills at night.  Here, I'll read you out the last
bit: "Yes, it's all right about the shares.  You
take quite decent care of my goods, why can't
you of my chattel?  I'll scrag you if you let her
get knocked up; don't take the slightest notice
of anything she says, make her obey orders."'

'The audacity of the man, the cheek,' I exclaimed,
'to call me a "chattel," to talk of "orders"—to
a person who by Act of Parliament has been
put on an equality with himself—to a woman with
the vote—to a householder—the autocracy of it!'

'Good word that,' said my aggravating brother,
'but then, you see, Michael isn't exactly Mr Jellaby,
and I'm going to see that you do obey orders, and
chuck in a few extras of my own—milk and things,'
said Ross vaguely.  'Here, get outside this
sandwich and have some more coffee for a start, and
then up you go to get a rest.'

'It's so nice by the fire,' I remarked rebelliously,
and then he remembered the old joke and said
whimsically, 'You know what you promised in
the harness-room that day, darling,' and he gave
me one of his rare kisses.

So I hope Michael the caveman is satisfied—that
black beast—out there.  All my plans upset,
all the crockery still in straw, no curtains up, and
not a picture hung.  Oh, I had planned to have
the cave so nice for his return, to sprinkle all the
floor with fine sea sand, to hang up the skin of that
big tiger that he killed, to keep away the draught,
and over the driftwood fire to set a pot of rabbit
stew (he always is so hungry), and then perhaps
with a new necklace for myself I should have been
ready.

Just as we were getting in the bus to-night our
Lady of Ventre came running out to ask me if she
might come two hours late to-morrow.  She said
that an old woman in the village was dying, and
was sure to be dead by the morning, and she had
been asked to lay her out, there being no nieces
or daughters who could do it.  'Can't say I like
the job, mum, but one can't 'ardly refuse to perform
the last horfice for the dead seeing as 'ow we've all
got to come to it; it's different if you know a
person; if it was you now, mum, or the capting,
I'd do it with pleasure.'  Ross's guffaw nearly took
the roof off.

When we got back to Fernfold there were three
letters from Michael, but I only liked two of them.
If he gives another man a Power of Attorney to
row his wife, he oughtn't to do it himself as well.
It's not cricket.  Oh, well, I read the third one
through again and liked it better, because I left
out all the written part and only read between the
lines—my darling!





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.. _`CHAPTER 2-XVI`:

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   CHAPTER XVI

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Another week has passed.  The workpeople have
gone and taken all their pots and pails.  Gidger's
cottage is almost finished.  It will be quite
completed by to-night and we are going to sleep in it.

At the moment the two chars are working in
the kitchen: Brown with his leg up is unpacking
china, Ross ordering every one about, Nannie and
the Gidger very busy in the nursery (the Poppet
giving much advice about her own department),
while the only person who really matters is doing
'nothing much' for a day or two, except cussing her
male relatives in her heart.

The day-nursery is rather pretty—soft green
walls, so that there may be no glare to strain
the precious eyes: white furniture, just big
enough for tiny folk: cupboards with shelves,
low enough for little hands to reach the toys and
that lovely 'Masque of Flowers' for pictures.

There is a window seat with cushions, where
big people can tell small ones fairy stories in
the dusk.  There's a comfy chair for Nannie
and a rocking-horse and doll's house, all presents
from Aunt Constance, sent 'with love.'

Then in the Gidger's other room the same soft
green, and all the pictures the small owner loves:
that perfect Madonna of Andrea del Sarto, and a
copy of Watts' 'Whence—Whither?'  Do you
remember that perfect baby, who runs out of the
sea toward you, whichever way you stand and look
at it.  By special request, hung where she can
always see them, are the two great favourites,
'The Good Shepherd' with a lamb, and the other—five
Persian fluffy kittens sitting in a row.

'Because I like,' explained the Gidger to Uncle
Woss, 'to see Jesus and the tittens when I get
into my byes.'

'Would you call King George by his Christian
name, Gidger?' Ross asked.

'Course not, Uncle Woss.'

'Why?'

'Because it would be most fwightful cheek.'

'Then don't you see it's much more cheek to
call Him by His, darling?'

'But I didn't mean to be wude to Him,' said the
Poppet tearfully, 'I'm fond of Him.'

'Of course, darling, so if you just say "Sorry,
Sir," it'll be all right.'

So the Gidger said, 'Sorry, Sir,' and the
conversation changed to kittens.

'I wish I had a titten, Uncle Woss, just like the
one in the miggle.'

Ross said he would see what could be done,
with which my daughter seemed contented.

But, ah, why is there only one little bed in the
nursery, why is there no little son?  Yes, of course,
Michael is 'better to me than ten sons,' only he's
so 'normous, the other would be so cuddley.

The Gidger does so want a long clothes baby
doll.  She's got a mother hunger for it, and I won't
give her one.  Shall I tell you why?  If I should
ever have the joy to hope about a little son, I shall
hunt the garden for a nest, and let the Gidger peep
at it with all the soft, downy things inside.  Then
I shall say, 'I made a little nest for you once,
darling, just underneath my heart,' and I shall
take her up in the nursery and open a drawer and
show her all the small robes and garments that I
made for her, and then she'll say, 'Oh, muvver,
why won't you let me have a long clothes baby
dolly?'  And I shall tell her about the second
nest that I've begun to make, and then I shall give
her a most perfect baby doll that I've got waiting
in a box just now.  I shall ask her sometimes if
she'd like to come and learn to sew some clothes
for her baby while I sew some for mine: and if she
pricks her little fingers, and makes a tiny spot of
blood upon the narrow hem, and looks at me with
eyes like drowned forget-me-nots (as she does if
she is going to cry), I shall say, 'But, darling,
don't you think it's worth it for your baby?'  She'll
learn to know then, when she's married and
she's got the mother hunger, that her baby will
be worth the mother pain.

And now the evening time has come.  The house
is finished, the last picture is up, the last curtain
hung, and all the dear domestic gods arranged.
Alas! the fly in the ointment has turned up also.
The staff has arrived, and I am terrified of it.  I
feel all awash inside to think that I have to order
the dinner in the morning and tell the S.P. what
her work is.  However, 'sufficient unto the day
is the evil thereof.'

Tired, but happy, I wandered into the scented
garden in the dusk to gather great branches of
white and purple lilac, armfuls of forget-me-not
and fragrant pheasant eye and the very early
honeysuckle that grows over the porch.  Then I
filled every vase and pot that could be induced to
hold water, and some that couldn't, Ross says,
because I stood a leaky jar on his dressing-table
and the water trickled into the drawer beneath
and reduced the contents to pulp.

The house is so sweet, filled with the spring, but
if only I had decorated all the rooms for Michael!
My heart goes out to him to-night with a great
longing.  The rooms are full of the peace and
fragrance only found in old houses, yet, dear as it
is, it can never be to me anything more than a
house till he comes and transforms it into *Home*.





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.. _`CHAPTER 2-XVII`:

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   CHAPTER XVII

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I think 'The Staff' might be worse, though it
could not be more alarming.  Dulcie cooks
beautifully, only she won't cook enough of anything,
and the S.P. is very superior, quite appallingly so.
She does her work well, but she despises me.  I
try to like her, but it is difficult to feel any affection
for a person who looks as if you were a bad smell
under her nose.  She has always lived with such
exclusive families that I cannot think she will
stay very long with us.  Her last place was a
failure, she only stayed a month.  'After I got
there,' she explained, 'I found the mistress was
not a lady.'

'How did you know?' I inquired politely.

'Oh, she never dressed for dinner, put the coals
on with her fingers, and had tea in the dining-room.
(By a merciful dispensation we have ours
in the hall.)  'I was most uncomfortable,' she
added, 'but I liked him.  He was a real gentleman,
his underclothing was all made of silk.'

'My 'Ilda' needs a great deal of polishing.  At
lunch the S.P. teaches her to wait at table, but it
is a daily martyrdom for any one so perfectly
genteel, so unutterably refined!

Monica turned up yesterday, unexpectedly, in
a motor-car.  She stayed ten minutes and then
dashed back to her hospital.

'Oh, Meg!' she laughed as she came in, 'why
didn't you tell me the truth years ago?  What an
utter little fool I've always been, but I've found out
that I love him after all.'

'Well, you'd better write and tell him so,' I
said, and kissed her.

'I have,' she answered, blushing like a wild
rose.  'Aren't I a bold, bad girl?  Aren't modern
women hussies?  I'm so longing for his letter,
Meg.  Oh, you were funny!  I'm not a bit
patrician, am I?  I adore cement!'

Dear old Monica!

And after she had departed like a young whirlwind
I had another thrill.  The curate and his
wife called, and he turned out to be Mr Williams.
He is still solemn, and thinner and limper even
than he used to be, but he cheered up a bit at the
mention of the Bishop of Ligeria.  She is a frail
little person with a dress like a spasm and the most
desolating hat it has been my lot to meet for years.
I wonder if she dresses so from choice or poverty.

I was glad my brother was in London when they
called.  His eyes would have been fascinated by
the reserve of food on Mr Williams's coat.  Funny
old thing I Ross is always so well-groomed himself
that, like the robin, he makes all the other birds
look dirty.

When he came home he brought a hamper.

'The one in the miggle's in there,' he said with
pride.

'You are famed for your lucidity,' I remarked
politely.

It was a kitten for the Gidger, such a purring,
fluffy atom, just out of the frame and christened
Fitzbattleaxe by my daughter the moment she
saw it.  When Nannie had whisked her away,
Ross said,—

'You'll have to put up with me for a bit longer,
old thing.  I got a big overhauling to-day.  They
say my arm is better, and I can have it in a sling
now instead of these infernal bandages.'

'Well, that's something,' I observed, but Ross
is not of a grateful nature.

'Small something, I think,' he snorted.  'Boards
are a lot of old women, said I must be content to
"Make haste slowly," as if I were a schoolgirl.
I want to be back with my men.  Oh, what an
awful time it seems since I saw anybody decent.'

'Well,' I ejaculated, 'if that's not the pink-edged limit!'

'Oh, twins don't count, Meg, but I am in a vile
temper.  Let's go and do something.  Clean the
greenhouse roof, shall we?  There's just light
enough.  Come on!'

Ross decided the plan of campaign.  I was to
pour the water from my bedroom window on to
the glass beneath, while he, armed with a long
broom borrowed from the kitchen, would stand
on a pair of steps in the garden and clean the glass
with the broom aforesaid.

'Now, Meg, plenty of water, no stinting,' he
ordered.

So I got a huge canfull, and in order that Ross
should have all the water he desired, I poured it
out, not from the spout but from the other end,
with great pride and force.  Alas, 'the ways of
mice and men aft gang agley.'  The gutter of the
beastly thing was too small to catch my Niagara,
and the entire volume of water rushed over the
glass, down Ross's neck, into his eyes and mouth,
flooding his pockets and soaking him to the skin.

He gave one awful yell and overbalanced into
the water butt, the lid of which, of course, was off
(it would be in my garden).  In my agitation I
dropped the can, which followed the water in a
wild leap on to the path below, smashing two or
three panes of glass in its mad career.

'Well, you have done it,' said Ross, surveying the
wreckage from the water tub.  'There's no doubt
if you want a thing really well done, it's best to
do it oneself.'

Then Sam appeared and looked reproachfully
at me, and spoke to Ross, and I heard the words
'arm' and something about 'taking more care.'

Ross looked through Sam in that disgusting way
he has when he isn't pleased, and said,—

'I can't go through the house like this, Meg;
why do you have your tubs lined with green.  Get
me a bath, Brown.'

'Cold, sir?'

'How can I get this stuff off in cold?  Hot, of
course,' snapped his master, 'and ask the Titmouse
for the ladder, Brown, and I'll go through the
bathroom window.'

As I went upstairs a little later, Ross's door
was slightly open; Sam was catching it.  King's
Regulations and the Hickley Woods wrestling
for the mastery.

'You'll excuse me, sir, you don't take care.'

Then my brother's voice floated towards me
down the passage.

'No, I'll not excuse you, Brown.  I've had too
much cheek from you the last ten minutes!  Get
me a shirt.  If you mention my arm again in front
of Mrs Ellsley, you'll quit.  Now my coat.  Do you
call this brushed?  Now a handkerchief, and get out.'

Then as he remembered that he was now promoted
to a sling he added stormily,—

'Understand once for all, I will not be fussed
over like a schoolgirl, I'm not a sucking dove.'

'Oh, no, sir,' said Brown, and I caught a flicker
of amusement on his impassive countenance as he
closed the door behind him with the wet clothes
on his arm.

Just then the carrier brought a crate of hens
and a box of rabbits from Aunt Constance.  We
felt rather like Noah when the animals began to
file into the ark.  The hens were the breed that have
the very large combs.  'My 'Ilda' remarked as they
were put into their run,—

'My! you won't get many eggs from them,
mum, they're all cocks.'

The Gidger loved the rabbits and I told her how
the mother bunny would presently have some
little ones, and that she would love them very much
and make a warm nest for them, and pull off her
own soft fur to keep her babies warm.  I want
my little daughter to know of all the wonderful
protective instincts God has implanted in His
creatures and the sweet provision that He makes
for all the tiny things.

Just before dinner we flew down the village to
buy some bran for the new arrivals.  On our return
my brother did one of his atrocious lightning
changes.

When Sam let us in Ross said,—

'Thanks, Sam, any letters?' and then 'Knee bad?'

'Pretty middling, sir.'

'Go and put it up, then.  What are you about on
it for?'

'It'll be time enough to put it up after dinner,
sir.  I *must* wait at table to-night, the parlour-maid
is out.'

The atmosphere in the hall became suddenly
arctic.  I shivered as the cold of it blew into me.
I could feel Ross looking through Sam as he asked
coldly,—

'Did you intend to say "must" to me, Brown?'  And
Brown said,—

'No, sir,' and did not appear at dinner.  I sent
him up a book and two Cox's oranges, so I had to
continue 'My 'Ilda's' education in the art of waiting.

As she handed the soup she decorated each
plate with a beautiful scallop like a flannel petticoat.
I suppose it is difficult to keep liquid level
and walk at the same time.  She had put no fish
forks on the table, so I said reprovingly,—

'What are we to eat the fish with, Hilda?'

'Oh, whatever you like, Mrs Ellsley,' she said
brightly.  Ross drank some water hurriedly.  I
endeavoured to make my meaning clearer and to
keep my face straight at the same time, whereupon
'My 'Ilda' said,—

'I do like being here; you don't mind how many
mistakes I make so long as I do it right.'

She shot a knife and fork into Ross's lap,
mercifully they were clean or there would have been
ructions, then she upset a glass of water and got
the hiccoughs, and later tripped over the footstool
and sent the cheese straws flying like leaves before
an autumn gale.

When 'My 'Ilda' brought the coffee into the hall
she stepped on the kitten's tail, and as that
indignant fluffy ball spat at her, she remarked,—

'My! ain't Fitzbattleaxe got a temper, I don't
think.  Your face *is* red, Mrs Ellsley; did I do it
all right at dinner?'

As I went to my room to fetch a book I heard
her fall down the back stairs with a pail.  It was
the end of an imperfect meal.  Ross says I ought
to start a nursing home for sergeant-majors suffering
from depression—they'd be cured in a week, and
then he remarked,—

'I wonder if Sam's got a decent supper.  I must
go and see.'

When he came down again he tossed a little box
into my lap and said,—

'Why didn't you tell *me* that you wanted a new
necklace?  I'd have loved to give you one.'

'What *do* you mean, Ross?'

'Michael wrote to me to-day that you had said
you wanted a "new necklace for yourself" directly
the cave was finished, and that I was to buy you
one.'

Oh, isn't he absurd and dear?  So I opened the
box, and inside there were two to choose from.
So I chose the one of very perfect pearls, and then
for some extraordinary reason of his own Ross
kissed me and said,—

'*How* Michael spoils you, darling.'

But two kisses in twelve days.  He must be ill,
I think.





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.. _`CHAPTER 2-XVIII`:

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   CHAPTER XVIII

.. vspace:: 2

It's All Fools' Day.  Perhaps that's why the
Titmouse elected to get the rheumatics that come
from damp attics, so that I had to tell the Stench
what 'to be getting on with.'

As I walked round the garden with him I asked
if all the seeds were in.

'In, an' coming up by the galore, mum, an'
I've given the turnips a dressin' of soot, as it makes
a vast difference to 'em on their first appearance
through the soil, mum.'

I could well believe it!

'I think you'd better dig the bed in front of the
kitchen window then.'

'How deep, mum, two spits?'

I hadn't the foggiest notion how deep that is,
but I said,—

'Oh, yes, *of course*, dig down as deep as ever you
can; you can't dig too deep, Stench—Tench, I mean!'

Ross thinks he knows a bit about gardening, so
at lunch I said,—

'Ross, how big is a spit?'

'Depends on how bad your cold is,' he began,
but I closed the conversation.

Alas, alas, hear the end.  Half an hour later
the S.P. said would I speak to the captain in the
garden?  I found him in front of the kitchen
window surveying some extraordinary earth-works
and excavations, the Stench standing by looking
particularly wooden.

'What on earth——' I began.

'I've dug so deep, mum, I come to a poipe; do
it matter?' said the boy.

I surveyed the scene of his labours and found
the little wretch had dug down to the kitchen
drain.

'Gardening is certainly your strong point, Meg.
Do you think the boy has dug this bit deep enough,
or shall he take up the drains as well?  By Jove,'
added my brother, doubling up suddenly with
laughter, 'what an acquisition you'd both be in
the army.  I never saw a better communication
trench in my life.'

At tea-time Ross gloomily surveyed the table
lightly spread with thin bread and butter and
minute cakes.

'Well, there doesn't seem enough for Fitzbattleaxe,
so let's go and have tea with Sam.  He's dead
down on his luck, too.'

'Knee bad?' I questioned.

'Putrid, so's his temper since I rowed him this
morning.'

'What did you row him for?' I asked.

'Usual thing.  Found him standing up brushing
my clothes to-day, so I pitched into him for once
in his life, hot and strong.  It is rotten for him,
but I really had to tell him a few home truths.
He simply must stick his leg up all day.'

So we went up into Sam's little sitting-room
with Fitzbattleaxe.

'Better?' said Ross, as he went in.

'Yes, thank you, sir,' said Sam, and got up
hastily as I entered.

'Forgotten your orders again, Brown?' asked
Ross sternly, opening the door to go out.

'No, sir,' said Sam, still standing up.  (I do love
to see him 'fighting' Ross.)  'Orders were: "Bed
at 11.  Not to stand up when it were you only,
between the hours of 10.30 a.m. and 7 p.m.," sir.'

Quite obviously Sam was obeying the strict
letter of the law, so Ross came in again, and I
remarked,—

'And I say, same hours when it's only me, Sam.'

'If you could both remember about the verb "to
be,"' began my brother.

'I can't,' I said.

Sam dropped into a chair, looking as if he'd like
to smash all clocks, and remarked he was absolutely
fed up.

'Well, we're not, we're half starved.  That's
why we've come to tea.'

'You want to count your mercies, Sam,' I said,
which being a remark to which my Aunt Amelia
is much addicted, was the most aggravating thing
I could think of at the moment.  When one is down
on one's luck it is fatal to be sympathetic, and
Sam was down on his, right on the bed-rock bottom
of it.

'Well, I'm counting the mercies he's got and
we haven't,' said Ross; 'there's quite a respectable
bit of heaven spread on this table at the moment.
A whole loaf, a pound of butter, two pounds of
strawberry jam and jorams of Devonshire cream,
goodies with sugar on top, and a plum cake that
you can cut.  My hat, some people have all the
luck.  It's a regular Hickley Wood one.'

'Make the tea, Sam,' I exclaimed, 'the kettle's
boiling; mind you don't set the woods alight.'

'Have I ever set the woods alight, miss?' Sam
asked indignantly.

'Nor ever failed to lose your temper either, if I
suggested you would,' I answered.

So Sam grinned and felt better, and made a
long arm for the kettle, and brewed tea, and cut
up bread and cream, and we had it in the Hickley
Woods, as we've had it millions of times together.
It was just the same.  Whenever I had finished
my slice, Sam put another on my plate, with
mountains of cream and jam on it.  At the third
I remarked,—

'Sam, there really are limits.'

'Yes, but you ain't reached them yet, miss;
four's yours.'

'Do you think you ought to speak to me like
that, now I am married and have a daughter, Sam?'

'He gets you muddled up with the daughter,
I expect, same as I do,' remarked Ross, 'only the
Gidger is so much more sober and serious-minded
than you're ever likely to be.'

'Four,' I called out; 'limit's reached, Sam.'

'Well, there isn't any more cream, anyway,'
said Sam, which, of course, was the one and only
reason why we stopped in Hickley Woods.

'I begin to feel better,' observed my brother.
'Why don't I have enough to eat at lunch, Meg,
I do at breakfast?'

'I see to your breakfast,' said Sam, 'and I'd
see you had a good lunch if only I was allowed
down.'

'Well, you aren't,' said my brother, 'so that's
that, and I should think it would be better manners
if you saw we had a good tea when we're up.  Pass
the cake.  Here, you eat the little chaps, I'll have
the plum.'

So Sam ate all the small cakes with sugar on top,
and Fitzbattleaxe got the cream tin to lick out.  He
went right inside and stuck, and had to be lugged
out by the tail.  Then we shoved the table back and
sat round the fire, and talked about the old days.  At
seven o'clock Nannie looked round the door.  She
was promptly hauled in and sat on Ross's knee.

'Sam,' she scolded, 'why do you keep them out
so late?  I really shall have to tell your father to
wallop you.  I've often threatened to, I really will
to-night.'

'Let's run her down the passage, Sam, for cheek,'
said Ross, and they were just about to do it when
Brown suddenly got up and said,—

'Want a bath, sir?' and Nannie said, 'Will you
wear your black again, ma'am?' and, of course,
it was that wretched S.P. come to clear away the
tea.  The smell under her nose was rather worse
than usual, and the picnic broke up hurriedly.
I felt as if I had been having tea with my brother's
man-servant, and Ross had been nursing one of
the maids.  Oh, I do loathe that woman!

It was a most unfortunate dinner to-night, like
one of those you get at Aunt Amelia's.  There
didn't seem to be anything solid to eat.
At the end Sam handed Ross sardines on toast.
'What a thundering lot of hors d'oeuvres we seem
to be having to-night, when's the dinner coming?'

'Savoury, sir,' said Sam.

'You don't mean to tell me,' said Ross, pushing
back his chair and glaring at Sam, 'that I've *had*
my dinner?'

'You've had what there was of it, sir.'

'Well, I'm jiggered.  Why on earth, Meg,
don't you make them cook more food.  Really——'

''Tisn't her fault,' said Sam, still in the Hickley
Woods, sticking up for me as he always did; 'she's
told them times without number; it's no good
blaming her.  Shall I cut some sandwiches?'

'Sam, I suppose I can reprove my sister without your
interfering, and I never blame, I always rule by love.'

'Same as you did this morning, sir,' grinned Sam,
'will you have large cups of coffee with your
sandwiches?'

'Do you think that's a respectful remark to
make to your superior officer, Brown?'

'No, sir, sorry.'

'I shall judge the measure of your repentance by
the number of sandwiches you cut,' said Ross,
'and if the cups of coffee are very large, I might
be inclined to overlook your cheek, otherwise——'

But Sam had vanished into the kitchen, and we
went into the hall to wait for supper.  A few
minutes afterwards, Sam dumped a tray of food
on the table.

We settled down comfortably for a good long
evening.  At 10.15, just as we were beginning to
enjoy ourselves, Sam came in, he looked like milk
and butter, and his voice was a caress.

'Turned your bath on, sir.'

'Are you dotty, Brown?' asked my brother.

'Certainly not, sir.'

'Well, what are you gassing about baths for at
this hour of the afternoon, you gloomy ox, you're
worse than a keeper.'

'Orders is orders, sir.  If I've got to go to bed at 11
you'll have to go at 10.15, if I'm to see to your arm.'

'My hat,' ejaculated Ross, looking across at me
in hopeless consternation, '*what* a fool I am.'

'First of April, sir,' said Sam, and fled upstairs.





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.. _`CHAPTER 2-XIX`:

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   CHAPTER XIX

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I can't manage my 'staff,' I wish I were an
Eastern Queen, then I should sort of call the
eunuchs when I wanted anything, instead of which
the maids do exactly what they like.  Ross says
if I won't let Sam 'do something' I must put my
own foot down.

The S.P. brings my early tea in a silver teapot
instead of the little brown chap I told her I preferred.
So I hid the beastly thing under my bed, hoping
she would take the hint and see I really meant it.
She came and asked me if that was where I wished
the silver kept in future!

Then when I ordered the dinner to-day I said
to Dulcie, 'Send in the junket in the old blue china
bowl, please.'  It came in that silver dish we use
for cutlets.  So I wouldn't eat the junket—said
it would taste of mutton cutlets, and after lunch
the S.P. rowed me for saying the silver wasn't
clean, which I hadn't even thought of, for she
keeps it beautifully.

Putting my foot down made my face so hot
that I retired to my bedroom to recover, but alas!
Fitzbattleaxe was making the day hideous with his
howls.  He was lodged on a ledge in my chimney,
just out of reach, and was apparently afraid to
jump the precipice into my bedroom.

So I tied my hair up in a handkerchief, put on
a nightgown to protect my dress, and laid down
comfortably on the hearthrug with my head up
the chimney.  At intervals I waved a bit of liver
at the kitten and said in my most persuasive
manner, 'Littlekittycatpoorpussycometomissusdidums.'  This
seemed to entertain the kitten very
much as it responded by rubbing its back violently
against the chimney and incidentally dislodging a
good deal of soot over me, while it sniffed
ecstatically at the liver.

'Goodness,' said Ross, bursting like a cyclone
into the room, 'what a sight you look; is that
kitten still there?  Mr Williams is downstairs.
Are you giving that little beast meat, Meg; how
many times have I warned you that it's illegal to
give rations to rodents.'

'It isn't a rodent,' I said, sitting up in the
fireplace, 'and it's not rations either, it's offal.'

A frozen look of horror slowly overspread my
brother's open countenance.

'Offal,' he queried, 'could it *possibly* have been
offal you said?'

'Yes,' and I began to get little creeps down my
spine as I did as a child when I'd been naughty,
'it's offal, edible offal.'

'The word "edible" does not excuse the word offal.'

'They call it that in the *Times*,' I said meekly.

'There are many things in the *Times* which it is
better not to repeat in polite society, Margaret.'

'I don't call your society polite, far from it,' I
rejoined.  'What does Mr Williams want?'

'Oh, my angel, he wants a lot of things: a shave,
for instance, and a bath and a clean collar, and his
clothes brushed, and his nails cut, and snow-white
flowers against his hair, and a heap of things like
that.'

'I expect he's very poor,' I said, waving the
liver at Fitzbattleaxe.

'Unless he's behind with his water rate, he could
have most of his present needs supplied by turning
on the tap.  He's asked to see you.'

'Well, I can't see him like this, can I?'

'You certainly can't.  You look like the back
of a cab, Meg!'

'Do tell me sensibly what he says,' I implored.

Ross pulled his mouth down at the corners,
closed his eyes and put his hands together as if in
prayer.  '"My dear wife is laid aside with an internal
chill, she is, therefore, unable to be present at the
class for female confirmation candidates this
afternoon, and as the vicar is away, I ventured to
think that Mrs Ellsley might be good enough to
speak a few words of exhortation in her place,
hymn 547, let us pray."'

'How can you be so absurd?' I said.

'Oh, why do curates talk like that?  Why can't
this man wash?  Why can't he be modern and
human?  Why can't he say, "Hallo, old bean, my
wife ain't in the pink, got a pain in her
breadbasket or something.  Priceless washout, too, as
it's her turn to spout to the gals.  Just blew in to
see if your sister would help me out of a hole and
come and do a pi-jaw stunt, what!"'

Here my disgusting twin retched realistically
into the soap dish, murmuring 'He makes me sick.'

'Your vulgarity is simply awful, Ross, do stop,
you make me feel quite ill.'

'I venture to think, my misguided young
friend——' began Ross again.

'You know what happened to the children in
the Bible,' I interrupted, 'who mocked at their
betters: a frightful animal jumped out at them
and——'

Here I gave a piercing scream as the kitten
suddenly decided to risk it, and landed
unexpectedly in the middle of my stomach.

'Just so,' said Ross with a howl of laughter, 'I
never saw a better illustration of it in my life.'

And now I want to ask the General Public
something.

*Could* you tell me why, because a person's mother
once fell off the top of a step-ladder, a person
should never be allowed to go on the top step
herself?  It seems such a ridiculous thing to hand
on from father to son.

'Gracious,' I said, when I was rowed for it
to-day, after Mr Williams had departed, 'because
mother did it, it's a thousand to one I won't.  I
don't know the actuary figures, but it practically
insures me against it, Ross.'

'I don't care,' said that gentleman, 'I won't
have it, and that's all there is about it.'

'How can you be so ridiculous.  You don't mind
if I go up a tree, and I've done everything that
you've done always.  If you don't think it's
dangerous for me to climb and hunt and ski,
why on earth should you kick at the top of a
step-ladder?'

'Well, we won't argue about it, Margaret.'

'I loathe twins,' I grumbled.

And he said he did, too, the sort that spat fire
when a chap tried to take care of them.

Suddenly the bottom dropped out of the world,
and everything that I had thought solid, stable,
and immovable came crashing about me, and my
brother, for the first and last time in all his life
was 'meek' to me and said,—

'Please, darling, because I found mother after
she smashed herself up so badly.'

It was that tide in the affairs of men which had I
taken at the flood would have tamed the lion to
eat out of my hand.  Oh, wasn't I a fool to say,—

'Oh, all right, Ross.'

But there it is, and I know now what that poor
darling felt when he wrote *Paradise Lost*.





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.. _`CHAPTER 2-XX`:

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   CHAPTER XX

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A telegram came from Monica this morning
saying,—

.. vspace:: 2

'Please meet the 11.20 train.'

.. vspace:: 2

So the family turned up at the station *en masse*,
but instead of the lady we expected, there descended
from the guard's van a beautiful and dignified
Great Dane with a label round his neck.

'For Meg's baronial hall.  A thank-offering, sent
with "Hove from a modern Lussy."'

Or, at any rate, that's what it looked like.
Monica does write so badly.

The Gidger kissed the thank-offering promptly,
and was rewarded with a large lick.

'Oh, *don't* wash me with your flannel,' she exclaimed.

Then we all introduced ourselves, and Ross
observed as he edged away from a very wet tongue,—

'He must be first cousin to the dog in the Bible
that was so kind to the poor beggar; you'd better
call him "Moreover," after him, Meg.'

'What dog, and what beggar?' I asked.

'Gracious, child, for a Bishop's daughter you
don't know much Church history, and haven't you
heard that old chestnut either?  Why, when
Lazarus was laid at the rich man's gate, Moreover,
the dog, came and licked his sores.'

Our Moreover is a splendid person.  Directly he
arrived at the house he walked into the hall, and
laid himself down by the great open fire, and looked
positively Elizabethan.

On the way home Ross dashed into the post office
to send some telegrams.  'Aren't I a fool never
to have thought of it before,' he said fervently,
but what he hadn't thought of he declined to say,
so I just agreed with the fool part.

After luncheon I slipped over to see Mrs Williams.
The curate opened the door himself, looking
haggard, with black rings round his eyes and
yesterday's beard still on his chin.

'I called to inquire for Mrs Williams and to
bring her some flowers and grapes.  I hope she's
better,' I said.

His hand shook as he took the little basket.
'How kind of you, won't you come up and see my
wife, she's a little better to-day, but I have been
up with her all night.  I've just taken her some
tea.  I'll fetch another cup.'

'Please don't bother about tea for me,' I
said.  'I'm sure your maids will have enough to do.'

'We haven't any maids.'

'But who is doing for you, then?'

'I do the best I can,' and he opened the bedroom
door.  If you could have seen that room and its
little white-faced occupant.  There was no carpet
on the floor, no fire, though it had turned quite
cold.  It was all very clean, but, oh, the poverty
of it.  The poor little woman was propped up with
two thin pillows and a sofa cushion, and had beside
her a cup of half-cold tea and a bit of bread and
margarine.

'Oh, Alfred, you oughtn't to have let Mrs Ellsley
up.  I'm not tidy,' and she patted her hair and
smoothed out the crumpled sheet.

'You look quite sweet,' I said, 'but I'm afraid
you aren't well, and as you have no maids is there
anything I can do for you both; what does the
doctor say?'

'I haven't had the doctor.'

'She won't let me fetch him,' said her husband,
'though I have begged her to.'

'Oh, but do let me send, Mrs Williams.  I am
sure you ought to see him.'

'No, no,' she cried, getting very agitated, 'I
shall be better in the morning.'

So I sat with her a little while and chatted and
then tried once more about the doctor, but in vain.
She would 'be better in the morning.'

'But, Mrs Williams, it would ease your husband's
mind so; do tell me why you won't.'

Then, because she was so very tired and weak
and ill, at last she told me.  She had had attacks
of internal pains several times during the winter,
and the expense and medicine had used up
all their little savings, and with a burst of bitter
tears she said they owed five pounds, and had
nothing more of value they could sell; and so on—all
the piteous tale—of high prices and an income
so minute that only by the most careful
management and hard work could it be made to do in
ordinary times.  Gradually all the little jewels
had gone and bits of plate, the food had been cut
down, and she had had to turn her clothes and
patch and mend and work till all her strength had
gone, and now that she was ill it was 'All too much
for Alfred.'  The poor little soul turned faint and
sick then from sheer exhaustion and lack of food.
I sent her Alfred flying out for milk: there was only
tinned stuff in the house, 'it went farther,' and
with a reckless hand I beat up their only egg,
which he informed me anxiously he had been
saving for her to-morrow's dinner.  And then I
flung the last few drops of brandy in the glass and
made her drink it all and eat some tiny sandwiches,
and a few grapes.  The food revived her and a
scrap of colour came into her cheeks.

'Now,' I said sternly, 'I'm going to fetch a cab,
and roll you up in blankets and take you to my
house and nurse you up a bit.'

Of course she protested, said it was impossible.

'Why?' I demanded.

Oh, heaps of reasons, gave a few, hadn't a clean
nightie, for one thing, she had only two and had
been too ill to wash the other.  She had so hoped
there would have been some in the last parcel
from the Charitable Clothing Fund.

'But I have simply dozens,' I wailed.  Yes, I
know, there wasn't an ounce of tact in that remark,
but I was thinking of my own luxurious room,
fires every night, all the pettings and scoldings
I get if I'm not well, and how nobody asks me if
I will have the doctor or takes the slightest notice
of me if I say I won't, and of all the clothes I'd
got and the general and disgusting air of affluence
there is about the family.  I hated myself and all
my relatives.  Yes, I did, the whole blessed lot of
them.

'But I couldn't leave my husband,' said Mrs
Williams.

'Of course, he's coming too, my spare room is
crying out for visitors.'

'But we are strangers, you can't take us in like this.'

'But it was "a stranger and ye took Me in," He
said.  Oh,' I continued, throwing grammar to the
winds, 'why didn't He tell a person what to do
when the stranger won't be took in.'

She laughed at that and then consented.  So I
flew home and told the tale to Ross and Nannie
in the nursery.

'Poor young thing,' said Nannie, 'but she'll soon
get better here.'  So I sent the Gidger flying to the
Titmouse for heaps of flowers, and the S.P. scuttling
round to get the spare room ready for her and the
dressing-room for him, and the Stench off on a
bicycle to ask the doctor to look in, and 'My 'Ilda'
for a cab.  After that I said to Nannie, 'Come and
help me look out some things for her, nighties and
something pretty to sit up in.'

And then I turned to my brother, who was sitting
silently.

'Why, Ross, I couldn't do anything else?  You
don't mind Mr Williams coming, do you?'  Suddenly
his Irish grandmother came on top, and he exploded
violently and unexpectedly in that way he has.

'What a system,' he stormed, 'what a church,
that can so sweat its ministers that their families
have not enough to eat, and gentlefolk are reduced
to wearing other people's old clothes and being
glad to get them.  It's enough to make one sick,
and I suppose they call it "holy poverty."  It
wouldn't make me feel very holy to see my wife
hoping some beastly society would send her an old
nightgown and have the cheek to call it charity.
Surely if it's necessary to help the clergy at all we
ought to give the best we can, as if we were giving
to Him.  Anyway, I won't have you give Mrs
Williams your old clothes, Meg.  If it wasn't that
Michael was so disgustingly well off it might be you.
Thank goodness I've got plenty of money; here,
buy her all she wants and if it isn't enough tell
me,' and he pitched into my astonished hands all
the loose money from his pockets and a note-case
stuffed with notes.  'And then you ask me if I
mind,' he stormed, 'when the boot is on the other
leg.  He may mind meeting me.  I wasn't decently
civil when he called the other day, sneered at him
because he looked unbrushed, when he'd probably
been up all night.  Why, I'm not fit to black his
boots.  It's all my accursed temper and my damnable
pride.'  And he flung out of the nursery into
his own room and slammed the door.

'Oh, Nannie,' I said, 'isn't he funny? he hasn't
been in such a bate for years; of course I never
meant to give her my old clothes.'

'Of course you didn't, dearie, he'll remember in
a minute, don't you fret.'

'Shall I go after him and tell him so?'

'Oh, I should let him bide, poor lamb.'

'So I let him 'bide,' though anything less like a
lamb than Ross at that moment wasn't conceivable.

We smuggled out some nighties, so that the
maids shouldn't see, and a blue dressing-gown,
and a little quilted coat to match, and some soft
blue shoes, and a cap or two, and a shawl and pretty
things like that to suit an invalid, and when I got
to Mrs Williams's house I packed them all in her
own suit-case and brought her in a cab to Gidger's
Cottage.

Nannie solemnly unpacked for her, and said,—

'How pretty your things are, ma'am, if you
won't think it a liberty for me to say so,' which was
considerably more tactful than my remark about
the nighties.  And the invalid blushed quite nicely
and looked at me reprovingly.

Daddy always said that Nannie couldn't tell a
lie and came out in a cold perspiration if she even
tried, but I think her first and last will be forgiven
her.  So we got Mrs Williams to bed, she was very
exhausted.  The doctor came and said that she
was threatened with appendicitis and that if this
attack could be warded off she ought to be sent to
the sea and get quite strong and then have the
operation.

While I was waiting in the firelight for dinner
a chastened Ross appeared.  He slipped his arm
round me and hid his face in my hair.

'Oh, Meg,' he said, 'I am a beast.'

'I was wrongfully accused!'

'Nannie told me about the ripping things you've
given her; I ought to be kicked for saying it.'

'Oh, Ross, what rot, what about that fat case of
notes?'

'Well, I can't give him my new kilt, can I?'
with a ghost of a laugh.  'I wish I hadn't been so
cool to the chap, but clothes with the remains of
the last meal on simply make me curl up.  I can't
help it, I do try and not let it show.  I will be
deadly civil now, I'll have my party smile on all
the time,' said my repentant brother.

Ross in white rags of penitence so amused me
that I felt I would like to keep him humble a little
longer.  The boot is nearly always on the other
leg, so I said, very gravely, hoping he wouldn't
feel me giggle,—

'You see, Ross, it was your damnable temper
and your accursed pride.'

Then with amazing suddenness the boot was on
the usual leg.  'I won't have you say those words,
Meg, and understand if I let you have these people
here, you're not to get fagged out.  Michael says
so in every letter he writes me.  I shall wire for a
nurse for her in the morning, and you're to get
somebody extra in the kitchen, and as you don't
seem able to manage those women, I've told Sam
to do something.  Michael sent me a prepaid wire
to-day saying you'd said you were hungry, and
what was being done about it.'

I was just about to protest when Mr Williams
came into the hall, so the conversation changed
abruptly.  He was quite spruced up, shaved, and
looked heaps better.  I saw Ross give one fastidious
glance at the spotted clothes, but he was very nice
to him at dinner and talked with charming deference.
When half a spoon of soup went down the ill-used
coat, I saw Ross slowly freeze and curl up, but he
violently uncurled himself and said, 'Oh, rotten
luck, sir,' and helped poor Mr Williams mop it up.

I slipped upstairs quite early to see how the
invalid was, and found her inclined to be sleepy,
and as I bent over her she whispered, 'I can't
thank you, but "Inasmuch," He said.'

Ross peeped round my door about eleven and
found me writing.

'Did *I* do it all right at dinner, Mrs Ellsley?' he
began, mimicking 'My 'Ilda.'  'You look quite sweet
in that cap and jacket, Meg.'  And then he added
hastily, lest I should be puffed up with pride like
Pau-Puk-Keewis, 'but I thought Michael had
forbidden you to read in bed.'

'He has, but I'm not reading, I'm just writing.'

'Humph,' said Ross, 'could I—would it—do
you think it would offend him if I got Sam
to—brush and—er sponge them, Meg?  Goodness,' he
ejaculated, pulling out his watch, 'do you know
what the time is?'

'Twenty past,' I said, looking at mine.

'Twenty past what?'

'I don't know, the hour hand slips round, but
twenty past anything can't be late; if it were five
to, now, it might be different, Ross.'

'Well, anyway, give me that pen, Meg.  You're
not going to write another word, and I'll have that
watch mended to-morrow.  Give it me.'

So I handed that over, too, and produced a pencil

'Well, I'm dashed,' said Ross, and took that also.

'Oh, do let me finish my letter to Michael, Ross.
The Titmouse posts it in the morning.  I only
want to write just one more thing.'

'You may say,' said Ross, handing it back, '"I
am a very disobedient wife, Michael."'

So I said, "I am a very disobedient wife, Michael,
but I love you" (oh, he's coming for the pencil),
"love you—lo——"'

But, of course, I've got another pencil, one must
be prepared for such emergencies, but the thing
that really rankles is, if he 'lets me'—in *my* house!

In the silent watches of the night I have decided
that if Sam does produce any improvement in the
housekeeping I am going to find out how; surely
my brain is as good as a man's any day of the week.





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.. _`CHAPTER 2-XXI`:

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   CHAPTER XXI

.. vspace:: 2

I feel anxious about Monica.  She hasn't heard
from Charlie.  I saw her yesterday.  She looked
very tired, but wouldn't say much—only, 'there's
hardly been time yet,' which she knows as well as
I do isn't true.  So I suppose something has gone
wrong there.  God doesn't seem to like people to
be happy lately.  I haven't heard from Michael
either the last two days, but I try not to worry.
Probably the posts are just hung up again.

Mrs Williams is better, much less pain, and a
little fatter, or perhaps it would be more correct
to say, rather less thin.  The nurse thinks she will
be able to get up for a while to-morrow, and
that she should go away for a change before her
operation.

While I was in the garden sowing seeds, Ross
came out to me and said,—

'Meg, excuse me mentioning it, but how much
do operations cost?'

'It depends on how much they take out,' I said.
'"Why, at one hoperation alone——"'

'Margaret, if you would have the goodness to
give me some idea of a figure, and not make me
sick, I should be so obliged.'

I looked round wildly for 'some idea of a figure.'  The
flower seed packet in my hand was numbered
207, so I said,—

'About 207, I should think, and it was "Our
Lady of Ventre," Ross, who said that about the
"hoperation."  As long as it's a quotation, a person
can say anything and not be blamed.'

'Your quotations always were about the limit,'
he answered, and went indoors again.

A little later in the afternoon Ross was drumming
idly on the drawing-room window when he suddenly
exclaimed,—

'There are two visitors coming up the path,
freaks, too, look at their clothes.  My hat, Meg I
it's Aunt Amelia, Keziah, and the fydo!'

I don't know if I said before that Keziah is tall
and rather angular, with smooth black hair parted
down the middle, like Aunt Amelia's, and as the
maid is always arrayed in her mistress's cast-off
clothes, one description will do for both.  On this
occasion each wore a funny little black bonnet,
and a long voluminous broché skirt, the train of
which was held right over the arm, showing acres
of white embroidered petticoat.  A black jacket,
and square-toed, flat-heeled boots, and those awful
stuff gloves that pull on without buttons completed
an awe-inspiring costume.

Keziah arranged my aunt in an arm-chair and
handed over the fydo to her care, and then retired
with my pulverised parlourmaid to the servants' hall.

Aunt Amelia was extremely gracious for her,
in an early Victorian fashion, 'Hoped we liked
our house and had found suitable domestic help.'  She
then asked in the next breath, without waiting
for my answers, what we thought of the church,
and when I replied that we liked it very much she
said,—

'I'm distressed to hear it, Margaret.  It may be
a beautiful structure, but do you know the vicar
believes in the Virgin Mary?'

Ross got up hurriedly and opened another
window, and then my amiable relative started on
the family and her friends and proceeded to pick
their religious views to pieces, while the fydo
wheezed and stank and panted at her feet.

I felt at all costs the conversation must be
changed, so I told her rather irrelevantly that we
kept chickens, but that we couldn't have many
as we hadn't much space.

'Ah, Margaret,' she said, 'if you want space you
can always look above.'

'But you can't keep chickens there, Gweat Aunt,'
said the Gidger, who had been listening with great
interest to the conversation.

My brother looked at me piteously.  I don't
know how much longer he could have controlled
his laughter.  Mercifully the fydo got fidgety, so the
good lady got up to go.  The Poppet observed with
deep interest that the loose cover of the chair
upon which the visitor had been sitting was all
pulled out and wrinkled.  She looked up at her
great-aunt, and in a voice of the most intense
interest, said,—

'Look how you've wuckled up the cover of
muvver's chair.  You must be cowogated like our
hen-house roof.'

Ross became so alarmingly faint that he could
only gasp out a choked 'good-bye' and hurry
upstairs.

I found him a few minutes later with his head
buried in a sofa cushion.  'Oh, what a thing it is
to have a corrugated relative!' he gasped.  'Isn't
she a priceless female?  And their clothes!  I must
write and tell daddy.  How he would have enjoyed it.'

And then my brother suddenly turned serious
in that funny way he has, and said,—

'But now, wasn't she absolutely putrid, picking
holes in everybody who differs in the least degree
from herself.  I hate that type of "Christian";
you ought to be able to judge Him by His followers,
and half the time you can't.  Nasty, spiteful old
cat, bet her husband wished he'd never married
her after the first ten minutes.  I don't wonder he
kicked the bucket at an early age.'

'Well,' I remarked in a pause, 'you aren't exactly
doing the charitable stunt yourself at the moment,
are you?'

My brother looked at me lugubriously.

'*Isn't* it difficult?' he exclaimed.  'Really, I
wonder He doesn't chuck me right out of The
Service.  I'm always letting Him down.  Oh, clear
out, Meg.'

So I cleared out, and as I passed the top of the
back stairs I could see the staff standing on three
chairs, craning their necks to catch the last glimpse
of Keziah as she followed her mistress down the
garden path.  When the gate closed on the vision,
the staff sighed deeply and said,—'Golly.'

Which seemed to exactly sum up the situation.

'Our Lady of Ventre' remarked,—

'Give my inside quite a turn she did when she
first come in the kitchen!'

Then I went in to Sam's little sitting-room.

'I've come to have it out with you, Sam, sit down.'

'Won't hurt me to stand up for five minutes, miss.'

'Sit down when you're told.  I'm going to stay
hours.  Put your leg up properly.  Now then,' I
observed, when discipline had been unwillingly
restored.  'We've had enough to eat since last
Friday, have you been interfering in my kitchen,
Brown?'

'Sorry, miss, but he told me to, you know.'

'Yes, but do you think that is sufficient reason
when I told you not to.  You must take a month's
notice,' I said severely.  'Who's the mistress of
the house, Brown?'

'You are, madam,' and he twinkled at me.

'Well, now, as you are really respectful, I may
feel inclined to withdraw the notice if you tell me
exactly where I go wrong.  Why are we so disliked,
let's have the whole truth, what's the matter with
us?'

'Everything,' said Sam, surveying me gloomily,
'but some things specially, the silver's one.'

'The silver?  Why it's almost all old, some of
it's seventeen hundred and something.'

'Well, that's what I'm telling you, miss; it's
battered in places, it isn't embossed enough, even
a bit of chasing would be better than nothing.
And then your clothes——'

'Well, they cost enough.'

'Yes, but they don't look it, then Master Ross——'

'Well, he always looks clean, Sam.'

'Looking clean don't matter, miss, he should try
to look rich; then your relatives—what's the good
of some of them having titles if you call them
plain "father" and "aunt"?'

'You can leave that bit out.'

'I'm not going to.  You asked for the whole
truth and you're going to get it for once in your
life, besides I want that notice withdrawn, I've
got a comfortable place.'

'Oh,' I said, 'I *do* hope you are comfortable,
Sam.  Do you think your knee is any better?  I so
wish I could give you a nicer sitting-room and not
in front of the house.  It's so rotten for you to see
us go out for walks and not be able to come.'

Sam has such nice soft eyes.  He said he
was 'Much obliged, miss.'  He is always 'obliged'
for such funny things, and never about the things
I would be.  He's never obliged for his wages,
really seems to rather loathe them.  Now I would
love them, especially if they were paid punctually,
which his never are.

'Well, now, miss,' he continued, 'when the letters
come, for instance, why can't Master Ross behave
like a gentleman and say,—

'"Brown, if there are any communications
from his lordship, or from my uncle, Sir Jasper
Fotheringham, Bart., or from Lady Amelia Leigh,
you may hand them to me on a silver salver and
retire."  Instead of, "Sam, chuck over anything
from father or Aunt Constance, and stick the
bills on the mantelpiece."'

'Oh, Sam,' I giggled hopelessly, 'we always
pray there mayn't be one from Aunt Amelia.'

'"*Aunt!*"  There you go again,' said Sam
desperately.  'Is it *any* good my talking to you?'

'Well, but what about the housekeeping, Sam?'

'Oh, that's worse than anything, apparently.
The first morning you went into the kitchen you
said vaguely, "We like thick soup better than
clear, and junkets when there's any cream from
Devonshire, and there are those chickens my
uncle sent, I suppose they'd better be used
soon."  And you seemed to think you'd done the
housekeeping for a week,' said Sam severely.

'Well, but that's what mother used——'

'Yes, but not after old Mary died.  If you want
a thick soup, you must say what they've got to
put in it.'

He got up hastily and murmured, 'Caught
again,' as the S.P. came along the passage with his
tea, and as she came in and I got off the table, he
said, 'Very well, madam, I'll see to it,' and I retired
with dignity!

At dinner to-night Mr Williams quite warmed up.
I suppose it's because his little wife is better.  He
nearly forgot to be a pallid curl paper and told us
tales of the East End parish he had worked in after
he returned from Ligeria.  He said that some of
the poor things were never washed except when
they were born and buried, and never entered a
church unless to get married, and they're all so
ignorant that he found one wedding party kneeling
round the font.  (I wish to goodness I had got the
chance of kneeling round a font again; sometimes
the ache for the small son is simply not endurable.)  Mr
Williams spoke, too, of the awful grinding
poverty, and the vice, and how the housing question
was responsible for so much.  'It's all a question
of money,' he said, 'money can buy everything.'

'Except the Kingdom of Heaven,' said my
brother, with one of his gentle looks.

And then the S.P. came in with a note for Mr
Williams.  It was from his bank, apparently.

'There must be some mistake,' he said aloud.
'Some one has paid in £207 to my account.  Oh,
Mrs Ellsley,' looking across at me, 'I can't possibly
accept such a sum, you know.  Why, one never
could thank you for half the things you have done
already.'

'Mr Williams, I swear it's nothing to do with me,
I haven't done it,' and I glanced across at Ross.

'Captain Fotheringham,' said poor Mr Williams,
'can it possibly be you?'

'Do you know, sir, what a captain's pay is?'
asked my brother.

'Why,' I exclaimed, rushing in where angels
would fear to tread, 'good gracious, Ross can't
live on it without an allowance from his godmother.'  ('Since
deceased,' I added underneath my breath,
to make it truthful).

'No, I suppose not,' said Mr Williams (he is so
easy to deceive); 'but what *am* I to think?'

'Well, I should think it was the most amazing
bit of luck, sir,' drawled my brother, slightly
bored.  'And I wish you'd introduce me to your
friend.'

So Mr Williams went upstairs in a state of complete
bewilderment to tell his little wife, and Ross
was really rather nice to me, though I was not
allowed to mention the subject of our recent
conversation.  However, he did say that I was a
nice child not to have given the show away, kissed
me once and called me 'Jonathan,' which he only
does when he is pleased with one, I mean not
actively *dis*\pleased.  Funny old 'David.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-XXII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXII

.. vspace:: 2

My visitors departed soon after breakfast to-day
in a motor-car with the nurse.  Mrs Williams is
going to the sea for a month to get quite strong so
as to be very brave and have the operation.  He
is really touching, so is she.  It seems such a small
thing to have done for such a wealth of gratitude,
and that absurd £207 will make it possible for her
to go to a proper nursing home, instead of the free
ward of a London hospital.

I was rather glad to see them go, although I
have learned to like them very much.  But for six
days I have had no letter from Michael, and
yesterday the mail brought me one from father which
upset me horribly.  He wrote:—

.. vspace:: 2

'DARLING—I want to tell you something I have
never told any one before.  I can hardly write of it
even after all these years—But I once saw a vision
of my Lord.

'That summer, Meg, after you were married,
Ross and I were so wretched without you, that we
went down to that little house-boat of Uncle
Jasper's on the Helford River.

'One lovely evening, after a wet day, I was in
the dinghy fishing when Ross came out in the
duck punt and said,—

'"Father, shall I go back and fetch our supper:
It's too perfect to go in?"

'So he went back in the duck punt and I went
on fishing.  Suddenly *The Man* I told you about
the night before your wedding sat down in the
dinghy, and as I was about to kneel to Him, He
said, just naturally, as a king might to any one he'd
known for years,—

'"Oh, Fotheringham, a boat is an impossible
place for you to be respectful in!"  And He laughed
as He said, "Sit down."

'And then after a minute He asked,—

'"Any luck?"

'"No, Sir," I answered.

'"It's because you're anchored; it doesn't do
in this river, and you're in the wrong place.  I'll
take you to a better."

'So He rowed me further down the river towards
the sea.

'"Is your line clear of weed?" He asked.

'And I looked and said, "Yes, Sir."

'"Do you ever breathe on your hooks?"

'"No, Sir, is it any good?"

'"Well, those old fishermen always say it's
better, why don't you try it?"

'So I did, and I began to catch.  Then *The Man*
said,—

'"What about My other fishing?"  And at
first I didn't answer, because He had mentioned it
to me before, and I wanted to refuse, but His eyes
compelled me, for all they were so gentle, so I
said,—

'"I'm not cut out for that other kind of fishing."

'"Not if I breathed on your hooks?"

'We fell silent.  Then I thought of the loathing
I have always had for slums and dirt and squalor,
and especially for natives, and He must have
known what I was thinking, for He said,—

'"Isn't it a good thing I didn't have an antipathy
for black people—that time I died for you?"

'And I said, "Yes, Sir," because all in a moment
I realised how black sin was to the Son of God who
in the perfection of His whiteness had been "made
sin" that I might become the righteousness of
God in Him.

'And then He said, "Anthony, you've been
horribly lonely lately, haven't you?"

'"Yes, Sir."

'"And you think I can't comprehend that kind
of loneliness, but it's you who don't understand.
I have never had My marriage supper—My bride
delays to make herself ready.'

'I looked at Him again then, and saw His ache
and hunger for *His Church*.

'"Anthony, land and water only divide you
from your children, so many of Mine are separated
from Me by sin," and I looked at Him again, and
saw that He would always be lonely till the last of
His children kneel to Him.

'"So, Anthony, what about My other fishing?"

'"I've not forgotten what you chose I should do
years ago, Sir, and if you order this I must go."

'"And still——?"

'"And still be Your unprofitable servant,
Sir."  For all at once I saw that, too.

'"Anthony, is 'I'll go because I'm ordered'
*really* the best that you can say?"

'I looked out over the beautiful river, at the hills
I loved, and I thought of the friends I would have
to leave, and of the beauty of my old Devonshire
home, and my heart ached increasingly for your
mother.  I looked at Ross, too, coming back in the
duck punt—Ross, the last of my immediate family
left to me—and I felt that I could only go out to
the mission field if I were ordered.

'"Anthony, have you ever heard the old saying,
'Don't look at the thing that is asked for, but at
the One who asks'?"

'"No, Sir."

'"Some people say you see then if it's worth while."

'So I looked at *The Man* who asked, and saw
afresh God's Son.  And suddenly I perceived the
limitless love of Him, and His unbounded sacrifice,
and the whole divine patience and perfection and
beauty of *The Man*, and I cried, in sudden surrender
and adoration,—

'"Lord, I will go willingly, because I love You."

'And although *The King* had had every right to
give the order, He deigned instead to accept my
long-delayed submission to His love.  And presently
He said,—

'"Oh, here's Ross coming back in the duck punt
with your supper.  I must go."

'But I cried, "Oh, don't leave me, stay to supper
with us both."

'"I can't to-night, Anthony, I simply must go
in to Plymouth, and there's an old woman in a
cottage I must look in at on the way.  You come
to supper with Me instead on Sunday."

'So He departed over the fields to Plymouth,
through clouds and trails of gorgeous blue and
gold, and the water was all luminous from His
footsteps, and the hills as He passed ablush with
rose.  As He went the sunset faded, and then
suddenly the brightness all came back, for *The Man*
called to me again from the cliff above the water,—

'"Anthony, the climate on that other river
isn't fit for English women."

'"Oh, Beloved of my soul," I cried, "I am
contented.  I would not ask You for her back."

'Then He smiled and my Vision Splendid faded,
but He left His peace behind, and the moon rose
undimmed out of the ocean where the Helford
River runs into the sea.

'And the reason that I've told you this, my
dearest little daughter, is that you sound unhappy
in your letters.  You are haunted by a fear that
*He* may take things from you.  But, darling, don't
you see that when you have Him you have everything.
Oh, Meg, His strength! and the supreme
perfection of His eyes.  No brush can paint Him,
no words describe Him.  Oh, darling, won't you be
dutiful to Him and leave everything to His most
unutterable love?'

.. vspace:: 2

But I can't feel like daddy does about things.
I can't trust Him.  I don't even want to look at
the One who asks if it means I have to give up
anything.  I love all my family so frightfully that
I don't know what I would do if He took any of
them away.  I only hope I would at least be civil
to Him.  I never could be 'dutiful' about it.  I have
never really had a trouble, only that dreadful time
when darling mother died, but then Michael came
along so soon after that it seemed as if God had
only taken away one love to give me back an
even more perfect one.  But since the war it seems
to me that God is so relentless and so jealous.  He
won't share hearts.  He will have all or none, and
I am growing to feel that it must be 'none' with me.
I am like that soul, pursued by the Hound of
Heaven; I fear His 'following feet,' I dread lest
having Him I must have naught beside.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-XXIII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIII

.. vspace:: 2

Twelve days again without a letter, and ah, dear
God! the news from France!  I kept my promise,
and Ross knows, and though he wraps me round
with love, it is as if I cannot taste or see or
feel, but I can only listen for the post that does
not come.  It has been a wretched week, several
of our friends are killed and many wounded, and
to-day at lunch the S.P. brought a telegram, and
my heart stopped beating.

'It's Foxhill,' Ross said huskily, looking across
at me quickly, and my heart went on again, and
then I prayed that I might be forgiven for being
glad that it was Charlie and not Michael.

'Not killed,' said Ross, 'but blinded, and his
right arm gone above the elbow.  He's in London,
and would like to see us.  Shall we go this
afternoon, there's just time to catch the train?'

'Oh, poor Charlie—and poor Monica!' I added
and got up.  I felt I hated God.  Just then a car
stopped, and the door bell rang, and presently the
S.P. came and said,—

'The Hon. Miss Cunningham is in the drawing-room,'
and even at that moment I noticed how she
loved to say 'the Honourable,' it was so exclusive.
I thought what a beast I was, and said,—

'Monica? oh, my poor Monica.'

She was standing by the window with a frozen
look upon her face, very pitiful to see.

'Don't go, Ross,' she said, after he had shaken
hands and was preparing to leave us together,
'You know Charlie best.  Don't go, it's you I've
come to see.  You are his greatest friend.  Perhaps
you can tell me about this, perhaps you know why
he has written this to me, who love him so,' and
she held out a letter.  It was very short, and typed,
except the signature, which was very badly written.

.. vspace:: 2

'DEAR MONICA,—It was more than good of you
to write to me, but I have thought things over
very carefully since I received your letter, and
have come to the conclusion that it is best for me
to say at once that I feel now I cannot marry you.
Please do not try to see me, and think of me as
kindly as you can.

.. vspace:: 1

'CHARLIE.'

.. vspace:: 2

'Has he told you, Ross?  Doesn't he love me any
more?' she said, with quivering lips, pathetic In
my proud Monica.

'Monica, dear,' said Ross, 'haven't you heard
about his wounds?'

'I have heard nothing since I wrote to him till I
got this.'

Then very gently Ross told her about the poor
blinded eyes while I kneeled beside her and tried
to rub a little warmth into her ice cold hands.

'And I expect,' Ross finished up, 'that he wrote
like this because he was half mad with pain knowing
that he must give you up.'

'Why should he give me up?' she asked.

'Why, Monica, surely you see that it's the only
honourable thing he could do, now that he's so
helpless; don't you see, dear, every other man
would do the same?'

'Then men are cruel,' I burst out.  'They never
think the same as women do.  If Monica had
married him, would he write like that?'

'Of course not,' said my brother, 'that would be
different.  She'd have taken him already then for
better or for worse.'

'She doesn't wait to take him till she goes to
church in orange blossom and satin, she does that
when she first tells him she loves him, doesn't she?'

'Of course,' said Monica.  'Are you absolutely
sure he loves me, Ross, and that there is no other
woman?'

'I did once hear him say he'd rather have the
Gidger.'

'Oh, Ross, the comfort of you!' said poor
Monica, and laughed and cried together.  'I must
go to him,' she added, and as she did this 'splendid
thing' the last vestige of 'littleness' dropped away
from her.

'And I will take you,' answered Ross, 'but first
you must have food and coffee.  Had any lunch?'

'No,' said Monica, 'and I can't eat till it's settled.'

'Get your hat on, Meg, and let me deal with this
rebellious woman, I'm getting such a dab at it.'

She laughed and let him put her in a comfy
chair, and ate the food he brought, while he sat
beside her and told her all the things he could
remember that Charlie had ever said about her,
and her eyes were shining when I came down
ready for the drive.  Yes, the 'Hon. Miss Cunningham'
looked a different woman; more exclusive,
if you know how that looks.

'Oh, Meg,' she said, 'I feel heaps better,' and
then shamelessly, 'If Charlie throws me over I
shall marry Ross.'

'Done,' said my brother, 'that's a bargain, mind.'

Somehow I don't think the S.P. would approve,
do you?  Such remarks are not made in the best
circles.

We were very silent in the car.  Once Monica
turned to Ross,—

'Oh, are you sure that it's only his eyes?'

And Ross said simply,—

'Quite sure, dear, don't doubt his love,' and
took her hand and held it till the car stopped at
the hospital.  We saw the matron first.

'He's very brave,' she said, 'and very very
patient, but I'm not happy about him, he's got
something on his mind.  He asked for a typist the
day before yesterday and dictated a letter.  He
hasn't slept since.  You can go up and see him at
once if you like.'

So Ross and I went up, and the matron promised
to bring Monica up in ten minutes.  Charlie was
lying propped up with pillows in a little room
alone.  I never saw a face with such a tortured
look.  It nearly broke my heart.

'Who is it?' he asked, turning his poor, bandaged
face towards the door, and when I took his hand he
said,—

'Why, it's Meg and Ross; how jolly of you, dear
old things.'

'Charlie,' I said presently, 'why did you write
that letter to Monica?' and as I spoke the door
was pushed open a little way and Monica slipped
in.  He turned his face away.

'Meg, I can't discuss that, even with you.'

'But,' I persisted, 'don't you love her any more?'

'Love her.  *My* God, how can you ask me such
a thing, how dare you torture me like that.  There's
some one in the room,' he added quickly, 'oh, who
is it?'

And then as Monica put her arms around him,
he sighed,—

'Ah, my dear love, why have you come to make
it harder for me now I must let you go?'  As she
drew him closer, and he hid his sightless eyes in
the warm comfort of her breast, we slipped away
and left them.

After a little while a message came asking us to
go up again.  He was back on his pillows and
Monica was sitting beside him very quietly.  All
the tortured look had gone from his face and a great
peace was there instead, and a great thankfulness
in hers.

'Meg,' he cried, with his old laugh, 'how brazen
all you modern women are.  You never have the
vapours like your grandmothers, never faint when
you are pressed to name the day, as any lady
should.  Instead, you come and beg a chap to
marry you when he's already said he won't in
writing, and bother his life out till he says he will,
just to stop the creature chattering.  This thing,'
he said, groping for Monica's hand, 'says that
three arms and two eyes are enough for any couple
to start housekeeping on, so—oh, good gracious,
*could* I have a cigarette; being proposed to is so
dashed exhausting.'

Then we said good-bye and Monica came down
to see us off.  Just as she and Ross went out of the
room Charlie called me back, and as I leaned over
him he said with his old absurdity,—

'Isn't it a merciful dispensation that I'm
"amphidextrous," Meg?  I shall, at least, be able
to fish with my left hand,' and then, with a little
wave of his old diffidence coming back, he
added,—

'Wasn't it perfect of Him to give me back Monica?'

I couldn't think what he meant, so I said,—

'Who, Charlie?'

'Why, the only Person I can see now, Meg—my
Lord.'  And I choked as I went down the stairs,
because from the rapture in his voice he seemed
to think his Lord was worth his eyes.

In the train Ross said,—

'What angels women are!'

'Oh, no,' I said, 'it's just the contrast.'

When we got home another wire was in the hall
addressed to me.

'Let me open it,' said Ross, picking it up.

'No,' and I snatched it from him and ran up to
my room.  The dreadful ice was all around my
heart again.  The horror of a great darkness
came upon my mind.  I couldn't pray.  I tried
to quieten all my jangled nerves by saying—Daddy
says 'They're underneath, oh, always underneath,
those everlasting arms,' and then I read the telegram
and flung myself upon the floor beside my bed in
an agony of tears.

Ross came in and gathered me all up into the
shelter of his love.

'Oh, Meg, not Michael?'

'Yes.'

'Oh, Meg, not killed,' he said again and held me
closer.

'Oh, no, not killed,' I sobbed.  'He's got the
D.S.O. and is coming home in three days' time on
leave.  Oh, it is such a relief.'

'You ridiculous child,' said Ross, giving me a
little shake, 'oh, you poor, funny little scrap, what
an awful fright you gave me.  Poor Michael, what
a wife he's got who sobs and cries because he's
coming home on leave, I'm really sorry for that
chap.'  And then he picked me up, a crumpled
heap, from off the floor, and dumped me on my bed.
'You'll stay there till you've had your dinner,
anyhow.  Now, don't argue,' he exclaimed, flinging
himself into the nearest chair, 'I must have a
cigarette.  How poor old Solomon got on with all
his lot beats me, managing two women in one
short afternoon's enough.  It is, as Charles would
say, "so dashed exhausting."'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-XXIV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   THREE WEEKS LATER

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIV

.. vspace:: 2

But of course I'm not.  Why on earth should I be
crying after three such perfect weeks.  It's only
just the smell of Harris tweed again.  I caught the
whiff of it as I came through the door into the hall
alone, after the last sound of Michael's car had
died away.  I wish I had been allowed to go to
London with him, it would have been another hour
or so with my beloved.  No, I don't really wish it
if he didn't.  I must be ill, I think, to be so meek.

After he went there was a ridiculous telegram
from Ross saying that he was returning in time for
dinner if it was convenient.  Wasn't it absurd of
him to take himself off like that the morning
Michael came, and only come to dine and sleep
twice in three whole weeks.  He has had another
Board, and the verdict is 'Three to four weeks and
massage,' and Sam's M.O. said, 'Three to five
weeks and massage.'  So there you are!  The
usual arrangement!

But, oh, to think in a very few more weeks I shall
have to say 'Good-bye' again to both of them.
I can't accept God's will about it.  My mind's
divorced from His, my wishes in opposition.  The
constant struggle to feel differently fags me out, but
perhaps I shall 'feel better in the morning,' as
Mrs Williams used to say.

.. vspace:: 2

When Ross came in to say 'Good-night,' he said,—

'By the way, Meg, how's the novel?  Got a plot yet?'

'No,' I sighed, and thought that Nannie was
right that time.  There is no plot in women's lives
just now.  They only say 'Good-bye,' as I have
done to-day.  For, oh, this book begun as a joke
is now no longer a book at all.  The written words
are just a mirror which reflects some pictures from
that thing I call my 'life.'  Each chapter is the
reflection of a day.  You who can read between the
lines will understand why some of them are grave
and others gay, and how my fickle mood alters
with each day's news, or varies with the irregularity
of the posts from France.  You will know, too, that
though each day stands as a single, separate thing,
unconnected, as Uncle Jasper would say, 'by a strong
plot,' yet each *is* linked to each by a great fear
and an endeavour to be brave.  For those who *go*
have all the 'plot.'  Theirs is the splendid hazard,
so to them goes all the high adventure and romance.
And we who stay at home have just the giving and
the waiting.  Yet some one said, 'They also serve
who only stand and wait.'  Ah, you dear women
folk!  I know the splendour of *your* waiting.  I
have told you a little of the rebellion that's in mine.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-XXV`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXV

.. vspace:: 2

Here's two-thirds of the merry month of May
slipped by!  The posts are regular.  We have had
a glorious telegram to say that father's coming
home.  The Gidger flourishes like a green bay tree.
Ross is better, and the house buzzes and overflows
(as the old vicarage used to do) with the jolly
men that he asks down to lunch, or to 'dine and
sleep,' regardless of the servants.  Bless you! they
don't mind.  They'll always slave for Ross,
and 'Our Lady of Ventre' 'dotes upon the military,'
so she'll always come and lend a hand.  But, and
there always is one, isn't there—the roof is not all
it ought to be!

On Friday a regular S.W. gale got up with raging
winds and driving rain, and in the middle of the
night I heard a little sound in the powdering closet
which leads out of my bedroom.  'That's a mouse,'
I said to myself.  The sound increased.  'That's
a rat,' I thought.  A horrid roar shook the room.
'That's a bomb!' I shrieked, thinking it was a
raid.  I heard Ross's welcome voice at the door,
asking me what I had dropped.  I hurriedly lighted
the lamp and let him in, and we surveyed the
wreckage.  A big bit of the ceiling of the powdering
closet had fallen in, and there was a small hole in
the roof through which I could see the stars.

'Did you say your prayers, last night,' said Ross.

'Of course, I did,' I replied indignantly.

'Meg, you couldn't have said the litany of St
Christopher.  I always do.  I never get night
alarms, my ceiling *never* comes down.'

'For goodness' sake say it now then, for there's
a huge crack over my bed.'

So Ross lifted up his voice and chanted,—

   |  'From gholies and ghosties,
   |  From long leggity beasties,
   |  From things that go bump in the night
   |  St Christopher deliver us.'
   |

We spent an exhausting hour mopping up the
water.  Ross said he could now sympathise with
the other occupants of the Ark when Noah would
keep opening the window.  After we'd got the place
dry Ross said,—

'It's nearly one o'clock, Meg; come and have
lunch in my room.  I've got a thermos full of coffee
and some perfectly adorable biscuits—the squashed
fly sort.'

Ross really thought my ceiling might come
down, so he rolled himself up on the nursery sofa,
and I spent the rest of the night in his bed.  I lay
awake for some time groaning in spirit at the
thought of the mess and muddle workmen always
make, and wondering how much more of the roof
was likely to descend on us.  Presently I heard
Ross whisper outside,—

'Meg, are you asleep?'

'No, I wish I was.'

'Your grammar seems as defective as your
dwelling,' he said, poking his head round the door.

'What I came in to say, Meg, was that when the
workmen strip that bit of roof you may find the
date of the house.'

I sat up in bed suddenly.  Life seemed rosy once
more.  'You angel,' I exclaimed, 'how exciting.'

'What a ridiculous kid you are, little 'un, up one
minute and down the next.'

'Well, it *is* exciting.  What did you wake me up
for if you didn't think so?'

'I thought you said you weren't asleep!'

I pushed him out and shut the door.  The thought
of the date so consoled me that I went to sleep
immediately, but I had one of my dreadful
nightmares.  I dreamed that the foundations of the
house fell outwards with a crash, leaving the walls,
which were made of squashed fly biscuits, standing
on the date—B.C. .4!

'Uncle John' came in to survey the wreckage the
next morning, but can't repair the roof till
Monday.  Then I showed him the crack in my ceiling.

'That ain't nothing, mum, surface, that is; I can
put a bit of plaster on it now if you like, but it
don't need it.'

So I decided to dispense with the plaster and to
sleep in my own bedroom, but my keeper thought
otherwise, so we had words about it.

'Ross, what *is* the difference between the air
coming in at the roof or coming in at the window?'  But
there is apparently a most enormous difference,
and my brother said,—

'You're not going to sleep in that draught.
There's a most beastly bug about just now.  All
the men at Canley barracks are down with it, kind
of "'flu," I suppose; you get a frightful cold in
your head, and then your tummy gets distended,
and you can't button your trousers, and——'

'Is that the bug you suggest I'm going to get?'
I interrupted icily.

And then he said I was abominable!

I am, however, allowed to sleep in my own room
after all, because 'Uncle John' nobly suggested that
the powdering closet should be boarded over till
he could come and mend the roof, to which my
keeper graciously agreed.

But half the night I could hear that bug walking
up and down in the powdering closet, scratching the
boarded door, trying to get in, until I said to it,—

'You needn't bother about me.  I'm not afraid
of you.'  And then it started howling, and I
discovered that it was Fitzbattleaxe up on that ledge
in the chimney again, and he kept me awake for
hours.

In the morning Ross said he must see if the ledge
could not be bricked up somehow.  We got a ladder
and a light, and he rescued the kitten, who spat at
him, and then he said,—

'Why, Meg, it's such a wide ledge, and at the
back there's a small stone slab which seems to be
loose.  Shall I see if I can get it out?  Give me
something to poke it with.'

I gave him my best silver button-hook, and he
jabbed about and broke it, but he eased out the
stone and found behind a little hollow, and—yes—an
old deed!—Such a nice one, though quite small.

It is an Indenture made the two and twentieth
day of January, 1645, in the one and twentieth
year of the reign of our sovereign lord Charles by
the grace of God of England, Scotland, ffrance, and
Ireland, King Defender of the Faith.  But the part
that intrigues me is that it seems to be a kind of
marriage settlement for 'George Albury gives to
his wife Mary'—Gidger's cottage—'in consideration
of the love and affection he bore her.'  So Michael
has only been repeating history.

But why did Mary put her deed in my chimney?
She must have got so grubby doing it.  I'm sure
her husband hated her to get so dirty, didn't like
her little hands so soiled; but perhaps her George
was up that winter with King Charles's army and
she hid it there for safety, for the times were much
disturbed and she was frightened.  Women don't
like war, I know just how she felt.  I wonder what
George and Mary Albury thought that other winter
morning, four years later, when their sovereign
lord, who by the grace of God was King of England,
ffrance, and Ireland, was beheaded on the scaffold
in Whitehall.

And every day now I say, 'Daddy's on his way
home,' and Ross says, 'Won't it be rotten if I just
miss him?'

Yesterday in church the vicar announced that
there was an awful outbreak of that bug at the
local Red Cross hospital, that all the men were
down with it, and nearly all the nurses, and
the few of them who had escaped were worked to
death.  He asked for volunteers to help, not with
the nursing, but in the kitchen.  I told Ross coming
home that I should offer, but he wouldn't hear of
it, because Toby once said years ago I ought not
to go within a million miles of 'flu.  But there are
times when I don't take kindly to the snaffle, as
Sam would say.  However, Ross is going to London
to-morrow, so I said no more at the moment, and
the conversation wandered off to the education
and upbringing of the young.

'The poor Gidger doesn't seem to get much
bringing up,' said Ross.

'Well, you're her godfather,' I retorted, 'you're
to blame; why don't you teach her whether her
name is N or M?'

'Oh, she knows her name all right, it's her station
in life she doesn't seem to be clear about, thinks
she's the Queen of England, I think, same as her
mother does.'

'Ross, darling, you don't really think that she's——'

'Oh, you silly little ass, Meg.'

'But I have views on the way a child should
be trained.'

'Then for goodness' sake get rid of them at once.'

'But all the same,' I persisted, 'I do hate the
way modern children are brought up.  They've no
manners, they are such little pigs at meals, and
they're always served first.'

'Well, the Gidger isn't.'

'No, but that's not your fault, Ross.'

I remembered the first time she came down to
lunch I told Sam to serve me first, and then Ross,
and then the Poppet.  He agreed, and said I was
'Quite right, miss.'  So he served me first and
then went to Ross, who said, 'You've forgotten
the other lady, Sam,' and so, without a word to
me, Sam upset all my carefully arranged plans
for my daughter's edifying and upbringing, and
went to the Gidger just because his master told
him to.  Ross and I had words about it afterwards,
and he said I was a silly little ass, and kissed me
for some extraordinary reason.

'Doesn't Michael think she is a disappointing
kiddie?' said Ross, breaking in upon my reverie,
but as I didn't answer the conversation changed
to oysters.

So the Gidger came down to lunch to-day, and
as he is better Brown waited, and in a fit of mental
aberration he handed a dish of stewed apricots to
her before he had been to me.

'No, thank you,' said the Poppet.

'It's apricots, miss,' said Brown.  'Miss' never
having in all the years of her long life been known
to refuse them.

'Apricots, miss,' said Sam again.

'No, thank you, muvver isn't served.'

So I was served, and then the lady who thinks
she is the Queen of England condescended to allow
her faithful henchman to give her apricots, and my
brother, with his usual habit of talking backwards,
said,—

'You see, Meg, how little you know about
bringing them up.  If you really had "views,"
such a thing couldn't have happened.  You were
always such a nice child yourself, so pretty when
you were a baby, such a pity that you've altered so.'

Then in a tone of most awful consternation he
added, 'Why, Gidger?' for my daughter was in tears.

'Uncle Woss' was beside her in a moment,
kneeling humbly to the 'Queen of England,'
'Darling, what *is* it?' he cried distractedly.

'You said muvver wasn't pwetty now.'

'Oh,' said Ross to me, 'could you go outside,
woman, while I comfort this lady?'

So I went outside.  After he had consoled the
lady she went off with Sam, but she wasn't quite
happy, so he kneeled down and took a turn at
comforting.

'I assure you, miss, you've not the slightest
occasion to worry.  Your uncle always does say
just the reverse of what he means—gentlemen
do——'

'But are you sure he thinks muvver is pwetty
now?' said the Poppet.

'Certainly, miss, not a doubt about it.'

'Do *you* think she's pwetty, Bwown?'

'She's perfectly distracting at times, miss; that's
why I forgot to serve her first.'

'Oh, you are my gweatest comfort, Bwown;
have you known muvver long?'

'Can't remember the time when I didn't know
her, miss.'

'Neither can I,' said the Poppet.  'I weally
don't know what I should do without you, Bwown.'

'I'm sure I'm very much obliged, miss,' he said,
and kissed her little hands, and then offered to
make her another boat or a new doll's house if
she'd rather.

How do I know that last bit?  Why, a little
bird told Nannie, and Nannie told me, besides I
always know everything.  Oh, you silly men,
because you don't see the finger on the pulse you
don't believe it's there.  Why, I know every
heartbeat in the house (including Brown's!) and so
does every other woman!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-XXVI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVI

.. vspace:: 2

Ross departed to London last Monday with Sam.
And I took the bit in my teeth and went up by the
train after they did.  I could see Ross and Sam
hanging on to the red lights at the back of the last
coach.  They catch their trains like that (men always
do).  I, of course, like every other woman, invariably
catch the train before.

I went to the Red Cross shop and bought a set
of General Service uniform, and when I got home
I found 'Uncle John' in a state of great excitement
because he *had* found the date in the roof, as
Ross had said he might!  I went up the ladder
to look at it.  It is carved roughly on a beam.
The wood is in as good a state of preservation as
the day it was put in, and some initials (of the
man who built the house, I suppose) are carved
over it so:—

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \J.\H.\T.
   1570

.. vspace:: 1

Elizabethan, after all!

It is such a pity that Ross is away, as I have no
one to gloat with me, but when he comes back and
rows about the hospital, I shall say,—

'Yes, but I've found the date,' and then all will
be harmony and love.  No one could be angry
with a person who had found the date 1570.

I have to get up so desperately early in the
morning.  Nannie is horrid about the whole thing,
refuses to call me or help me dress, says she
is sure Master Michael won't approve and that
she's not going to have any hand in it.  However,
1570 consoles me for much, though everything
else is rather beastly.

So on Tuesday I went to the hospital.  It was
a vile morning, blowing half a gale and raining.
It took me so long to get into the unaccustomed
clothes without Nannie that I had to run most of
the way to avoid being late.

If you were outside a place and wanted to get
in, what would you do?  Ring the front door bell,
of course, you say.  Well, that's what I did, but it
wasn't right, quite wrong, in fact.  The person
who opened the door to me seemed to think I
must be dotty.  I ought to have gone to the back
door and taken off my hat and coat in a kind of
mausoleum in the yard.  By the time I had rectified
all these mistakes it was a quarter past eight.  I
didn't know how the veil ought to be worn either,
so I put it on as the nurses did in Ross's hospital
in London, which turned out wrong, for when I
went to matron for my orders, she snapped,—

'Washing up—you're not an army sister yet,
and no use at all to me unless you're punctual.'

I could see that she meant something horrid,
but couldn't think what, and I blushed and
stammered like a school child.  There was a nice
girl in the scullery who came behind the door and
altered my veil and tried to console me by saying,—

'Matron isn't a bit like that usually, only she's
absolutely overdone, as we all are.'

Then I started washing up.  They had had
kippers for breakfast, and I had no idea that they
were so disgusting cold, or how impossible it was
to prevent water going over one's feet when one
emptied a big panful down the sink.  By the time
I had been at it an hour I was soaking, I could feel
it on my skin, and the floor was all awash.  A
diver's costume would have been really useful.
The girls who had been there for months thought
I was such a fool.  (They do not suffer fools gladly
in a military hospital!)  They were quite polite,
of course, that's why it was so hard.  I'm not
used to people being polite to me.

The only person who was really decent was the
charwoman, who was also new that morning, so
perhaps she had a fellow feeling.  She did not,
however, seem to be quite clear as to what a
V.A.D. was, for she said,—

'Oh, duckie, you are wet; new at it, ain't you?
Why don't you buy yourself a mackintosh apron?
I did in my first place, they aren't expensive.'

Later on, when I had dried up a bit and was
cleaning a saucepan with great vigour, she said,—

'Nice 'elp you'll be to mother after this, duckie.'

I was very bucked at that remark.  It's nice to
feel that one person, at any rate, believes you to
be young enough to be 'a nice 'elp to mother.'

At 10.30 a.m. the kitchen staff all came into the
scullery and sat on boxes and drank cocoa, and
ate bread and dripping (I hid the dripping part of
mine) while the orderly and boy scout had theirs
in the kitchen.  After cocoa I helped with the
potatoes and then cleaned saucepan lids.  Then I
washed up the men's dinner things.  They had
had Irish stew and suet pudding.  Have you ever
washed a pudding cloth?  My last job was the pig
pail!  In the happy past when I have gone and
loved the little pigs at Uncle Jasper's I never
knew there was a pig pail.  Ours stands outside
the backdoor in the yard.  It's rather like a domed
cathedral; into it you scrape the kipper skins and
bits of bread and fat and apple cores, and things
like that.

I can do it now without active sickness.  By the
end of the week, perhaps, I need not shut my eyes
or hold my nose.

But my hands are disgusting.  My finger-nails
are in deep mourning and the grease will not come
off.

On Wednesday I committed the sin that can
never be forgiven, for, unaddressed, I spoke to a
General in front of matron, and I am to be shot at
dawn on Friday.

This is what happened.  I was just about to
replenish the pig pail, trying to screw up my
courage to remove the dome from the cathedral,
when round the house came matron in a very
starched apron with several extra ramrods down
her back.  With her was a most splendid brass
hat—rows of ribbons, gorgets, gold braid, all complete,
and there were several other officers.  Picture me
standing by the pig bucket—I was not too clean.
I hadn't got my sleeves on, my arms were streaked
with blue bell, and my cap was slightly crooked.
Suddenly I looked at the advancing General, and
I said quite loudly,—

'Toby, dear, what priceless luck!'

It was General Sir Tobias Merriwater, K.C.B.,
D.S.O., M.D., F.R.C.P.  All I remembered was
that I had known him all my life, and never called
him anything but 'Toby'.

Suddenly the warm spring day vanished, I was
up at the North Pole, or the South one if it's colder,
as I saw the matron's face.  And then, by way of
trying to ease the situation, I dropped the scullery
pig pail, showered the kipper skins and apple
cores, bits of bread and fat and suet, like rice and
rose leaves at a wedding in the pathway of a bride.

There was an awful silence, even the officers
forgot to be bored, and looked quite interested.
I drew back and wished I could get right inside
the pig bucket, and shut down the lid.

'Ah,' said General Sir Tobias Merriwater to the
matron, 'you keep pigs?'

'Yes, sir,' said she.

She was very bright and nice to him.  (I understand
people are always nice and bright to Generals.)

'And this is for them, I suppose.  Most commendable,
very.'  And the retinue passed on.

I picked up all the 'rice and rose leaves,' every
bit of it by hand, and then I went and told the
girl I work with in the scullery.  She collapsed
into the coal box, saying, 'You'll be shot at dawn,'
when a hand cautiously opened the scullery
window and a voice said,—

'I'll be waiting outside the gate when you go
home at one o'clock, and if you would kindly
hurry I think it would be better, for I'm very much
afraid I shall explode.'

So at one o'clock I went outside the gate,
whereupon there appeared the unseemly spectacle of
the latest V.A.D. hugging the Visiting Committee!

'Oh, Toby, it's such pure bliss to see you.  I
wish I could shake hands,' I said, 'but I really am
so filthy.'

'A kiss of yours is good enough for any man,'
said Toby.  So of course I kissed him, as I always
have, and at that moment matron caught us!
Somehow, my luck's dead out.  However, I felt
as I was not on duty I could hug Generals if I
chose, and, anyway, I was to be shot at dawn on
Friday, so nothing mattered.

So the Visiting Committee came home to lunch
with me and stayed to tea, which it hadn't meant
to do, and then stayed on for dinner, but it couldn't
stop the night, or else it would have.  It was
delightful to see Toby.  When he went he said,—

'Darling, you don't look too frightfully well,
are you being taken care of properly?  You ought
not to be going to that beastly hospital when
they've got influenza.  You're not strong enough.
Do you ever faint now?'

'Never, except once last Thursday.'

But I don't think he heard, for he went down to
the car and drove away.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CHAPTER 2-XXVII`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVII

.. vspace:: 2

Ross wired to say that he was delayed till Tuesday,
and then came on Saturday after all.  I was in the
hall wondering why I felt so tired and whether
I'd bother to change for dinner, when my brother
let himself in at the front door, followed by Brown.

'Why, Ross, this is a surprise.  I didn't expect
you to-day!'

He had, however, somehow grown deaf during
his absence, and merely said,—

'Good-evening, Margaret.  See to the luggage,
will you, Brown,' and walked upstairs, followed
by all the dogs.

'Has anything happened, Sam?' I asked.

'Not in London, miss,' and he handed me the
evening paper.

Obviously a storm was brewing, so I decided
that it was worth while to dress.  I put on my
best and latest frock.  At dinner I was sparkling,
and told my brother all about the hospital
in my most vivid style.  Somehow he didn't
think any of it the least amusing.  I asked
him then if he wasn't sorry to miss Toby, and
he informed me that he had had lunch with him
at the club in London.

Ross was, however, quite polite and civil, more
so than he'd been for years, but as to rowing me
as I had thought, oh, dear, no; he quite obviously
was not interested in me at all, the whole subject
of the hospital bored him stiff.

I thought I'd see if the date would warm the
atmosphere.

'Ross, we've had such an excitement while you
were away.  We've found the date in the roof, and
it's 1570.'

'Oh, really,' he drawled.

After that I gave it up.  If 1570 wouldn't melt
an iceberg, nothing would, so we adjourned to the
hall for coffee, and now there sits on one side of
the fire, surrounded by ice and snow fields,
something which was once my twin, while I sit on the
other writing my novel, trying to get thawed,
pretending I don't mind a bit.

I have such a poisonous headache.  I feel so
funny!  I——

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



For ten days I haven't been allowed to write,
not even to Michael, and even now I may only do
so for a 'very little while.'

After my headache I remember nothing till I
found myself in bed and Ross making up the fire,
still in his old dinner jacket.  He looked a giant
in the dim light, and I called out to him,—

'Why am I in bed if it's dinner time?'

'It isn't, it's eleven o'clock at night.'

'Then why are you here, Ross?'

'You weren't very well, fainted or something
naughty, and I'm just going to change and stay
with you for a bit.'

'But I don't want any one to sit up with me.'

'Sorry,' said the giant firmly.

'No, but I mean that I don't need any one.'

'The doctor's the best judge of that, Meg.'

'Ross, am *I* ever the best judge of anything?

'Not to talk till you're better,' he replied.

I said, 'Oh, I shan't be better till I've talked.'  So
he said I might 'a very little while then.'

'Have I got the bug?' I asked.

'Yes, a minute one, so Nannie mustn't come
because of the Gidger; it's nothing to be alarmed
about.'

'I'm not a bit alarmed about the bug, only it
always frightens me to faint.  You won't leave me
when I feel like fainting, will you?' I asked, feeling
very like it at the moment.  Even an iceberg
seems a standby when you're going to faint.  Then
I began to shake and shiver and felt as if I were
slipping down a slope, till Ross held me in his arms
to stop me sliding down so fast.  When I was a
little better I said,—

'Oh, don't be angry with me any more.'  He was
so ridiculous then and teased me, said I must be
much worse than the doctor thought, to mind
about any one being angry with me.

'But I do mind,' I said.

He was very sweet to me.  I can't think how big
things can be so gentle.

'Of course, I'm not "angry" with you, darling,
only I feel I have so badly bungled things, if you
felt it was necessary to go to the hospital without
telling me.'

'But, Ross, if you had been here, you wouldn't
have let me go.'

'Well, of course I wouldn't when you catch the
'flu every time you meet the bug.  Michael——'

'Oh, don't let Michael be angry with me either,
I can't bear it.'

'Oh, Meg, I'm sure your temperature must
have gone up miles, I shall have to send the
S.P. for the doctor, if you go on being "meek."  Has
Michael ever been angry with you, you little goose?'

'No, except about the being taken care of side of things.'

'Well, don't you see, one must take care of
something smaller than oneself.  I can't explain,
little 'un, only it's in one's blood, and your going
to the hospital like that——'

'Hurt you?'

'Well, darling, if you make me say it, yes, a
little bit.'

'I wish that I were dead and buried.'

'The bug always makes a chap feel like that, Meg.'

'It isn't the bug,' I answered, and cried against
his sleeve.  'Oh, could you stop feeling hurt?'

'It depends how good you're to be in future,'
said the giant, grinning.  'Will you do all the
things I want you to, the next few days?  Will
you be a doormat just for once and let me trample
on you because you've got the bug?'

'Yes,' I said meekly.

'Oh, my angel,' exclaimed my brother in great
amazement, 'I do feel frightfully worried about
you, I'm perfectly certain you'll be dead in the morning.'

So the list includes a nurse, no letters till I'm
told I may, 'a willing spirit' as to letting the
doctor decide when I am to get up, and millions of
etcs.  When I tell you that I took the whole lot
'lying down,' you will know to what deeps that
bug has brought me.  So I am a doormat, and
Ross tramples on me.

One day Toby came to see me when I was feeling
extra specially ill.  Ross sent for him, I found out
afterwards.  And when he went away and Ross
came back into my room he said,—

'Oh, Meg, you look heaps better, your eyes are
shining so,—why, darling!'  For the tears and
smiles were all mixed up.  But I couldn't tell him
why just then, only Toby said he thought the
stork might fly into my house again some day if
I were careful.





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.. _`CHAPTER 2-XXVIII`:

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   CHAPTER XXVIII

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The garden has been a place of sweet delights the
last ten days.  The pear-trees are veiled in bloom,
the pink almonds fully out, and the gorse a golden
glory.  I think my dear Dame Nature comes every
night and makes some scent for me.  I do not see
her though, because I have to go to sleep so early
since I became a doormat.  But when I am carried
down into the garden in the morning the air is
warm and sweet, and I lie out under the fir-tree
all day long, gradually getting stronger and thinking
lovely secret things.

On Tuesday it was so funny and yet pathetic.
Sam went before his M.O. and Ross for his last
and final Board.  He got home first and was tired
but radiant, because he had been passed and might
expect his orders any day.  He was standing by
my chair talking to me when the gate clicked and
Sam came in, and Ross hailed him as a man and
brother.

'Well, what luck, Sam?'

'Oh, all right, sir, passed all right.'

'What priceless luck, Sam; did they pull your
knee about a lot?'

'Did a bit, sir,' said Sam, looking very fagged
I thought.

'Hurt at all?'

'Hardly at all, sir.'

'If it hurt *at all* they oughtn't to have passed
you,' said Ross, the officer, careful for his men.
'I shall send you back and say that you've been
humbugging.'

'I don't think you will send me back,' grinned
the Hickley Woods.

'What?' snapped the King's Regulations.

'I'm sure you won't,' said the Hickley Woods
again.

'Why not?' demanded the King's Regulations
furiously.

'Because you've done the same yourself, Master
Ross.'  And Sam went into the house quickly,
leaving his master gasping,—

'Oh, what a chap!'

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

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And everything is packed, and there is only
just the telegram to wait for.

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

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And it has come and he is to go to-night.

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1

And now it is to-night, and he has gone.  Oh,
it was hard that I was made to go to bed early as
usual.  It is sometimes very difficult to be a
doormat.  So he came to say 'good-bye' to me when I
had gone to bed.

'Oh, Meg, isn't it just too rotten to miss
daddy?'  And I agreed it was.

'You will keep the nurse a few more days,
darling, won't you?  Just till Monday, anyway.
I shall feel that much happier about you, if you
will.'

So I said I would.  I wanted him to go away
'that much happier,' though I would much rather
have been alone.

'Feeling pretty well, to-night, little 'un?'

'Yes, pretty well.  Ross, darling, I have
loathed having you.'

'I know,' he said.  'It's been the most wretched
five months I ever remember, and this cottage
is appalling.  I suppose you couldn't see your
way to move into a red-brick villa.  Oh, here's
your watch, it came to-day.'

'Oh, thank you, I'd forgotten all about it.'

'You'll be able to count the hours now till daddy
comes, Meg.'

'Yes,' and I thought that I could also count
the minutes till my brother went.  I looked at
my watch and found it wasn't my old silver thing,
but a little gold wrist one set with pearls, and
he 'hoped I liked it,' and I said I did.  And then
he asked,—

'Have I taken care of you nicely for Michael,
little 'un?'

I said he had.

'Oh, Meg, I do wish daddy had come.  Why
does Aunt Constance go and get the 'flu again,
just when I wanted her to be here to look after you.'

'I don't know, but I shall be all right, Ross.'

'Why, Jonathan, you're like the old woman
that used to amuse you in the village, there's 'Only
the Almighty' left to do it.'

And I smiled, but my lips quivered, too, and I
clenched my hands.  So then he sat down on my
bed and said,—

'You needn't be ashamed to if you want to.
I know you've got "views" about it, and didn't
when you said good-bye to Michael, but a person
that has had a bug is not considered to be eternally
disgraced if she does.'

So I did, and clung to him a little while, and
then he remarked that it was an awful thing
to have a sister who had got a bug, so that no one
would come and stay with her.  Then he kissed me
and whispered,—

'I'm not perfectly positive that you aren't safest
of all with Him, darling.'





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`PART III`:

.. _`CHAPTER 3-I`:

.. class:: center large bold

   PART III

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center

   'Acquainted with grief.'

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER I

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  'I fled Him, down the nights and down the days:
   |  I fled Him, down the arches of the years:
   |  I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
   |  Of my own mind: and in a mist of tears
   |  I hid from Him.'
   |                            *Hound of Heaven.*

.. vspace:: 2

Another fortnight has slipped away.  I have
had one little note from Ross in which he sent me
'all his love,' and now, how can I write the news
I have to tell?

Three days ago (ah, what an eternity it seems)
I was ordering the dinner, for I am stronger now,
and able to do the usual things.

Uncle Jasper and Aunt Constance were due to
arrive in time for lunch.  Captain Everard was to
dine that night, and I had just said to cook, 'Extra
good to-night, please, Dulcie, because he is a very
special friend of my brother's' when the S.P. came
into the kitchen with rather a startled look, and
said, 'Captain Everard has arrived already,
ma'am.'  When I saw his face, I knew.

'It's Ross,' I said.  'So soon?'

Yes, directly he got over.  He must have been
rushed straight up to the trenches.  How can I tell
you, Mrs Ellsley?'

'See, I am quite calm,' I said, 'please, tell me
just the truth.'

So he told me the little that he knew, how very
early in the morning he had received a telegram,
(as Ross in his dear thoughtfulness had wished any
such news to go first to him and not to me.)  He
said that Ross was wounded very desperately, and
he had come himself to take me to the coast.

'Can you leave here in half an hour?' he asked.
'If that is possible you may see him.'

'Yes,' I answered.

Nannie packed for me, while I got ready.  She
was very quiet and good, only said, 'My lamb, my
lamb, tell him——'

'I will tell him all your eyes say, darling,' and I
got into the car.

I do not remember what happened then.  I felt
nothing.  I was numb.  I only knew that kind
hands passed me on from car to boat, and then
from boat to train, and car again, till I stood at
midnight in a little room opposite a sister with a
tired face, waiting for her to speak.

'Ah,' she said, 'you have been very quick; we
hardly hoped to be in time to reach you.'  Then
she told me that he had been brought in the day
before, hopelessly wounded in the body.

'It is a miracle that he has lasted with such
appalling wounds; he is only living on his
willpower, waiting for you.'

'Is he in pain?' I asked.

'At first, yes, agony all the time, but now there
are intervals between the bouts of pain, and at the
end I think he will not suffer.'

'But you can keep it down with morphia,' I said
quiveringly.

'We did at first, but he dislikes it so, and now
the pain is lessening he has refused to have any
more because it clouds his mind.  He asked
for the chaplain a little while ago,' she continued.
'Just before he had the Blessed Sacrament he had
a bout of pain and I begged him to let me give him
morphia.  "No, don't ask me again, sister," he
said, and I felt rebuked.  But it is not safe to
linger—come.  I am afraid he may be very exhausted,'
she added as I followed her upstairs.

She opened the door of a small, quiet room, and
signed to the orderly to go away.  Ross was little
altered, but his face had lost its colour, and there
was a drawn look round his mouth, and his eyes
were very tired.  He stirred as the door closed on
the orderly.

'It's Meg,' he said faintly and smiled.  'How
sweet of you to come, how quick you've been,
darling.'

The sister gave him a little brandy, which
revived him.

'She's been so beautifully kind,' he said, as she
prepared to go, then as she went she whispered,—

'Sponge his face and hands after the pain, and
give him a little brandy when he is exhausted.
I can do no more for him than you can, and he will
love to have you to himself.  Ring if you want me,
I am close at hand.'

I put my arms around him.

'So happy now,' he sighed.

'Are you in pain, my darling?'

'Better,' he answered.  'I feel now like the lady
in *Hard Times*, as if there were a pain somewhere in
the room, but I'm not perfectly sure that I've got it!'

'Mrs Gradgrind?' I said.

'How well you know your Dickens, little 'un.
I always thought that such a funny joke.  Don't
hold me, darling, you must be so tired.  Sit down
beside me.'

Presently he said,—

'You might see poor old Sam to-morrow, he's
somewhere in the hospital.  He wants to marry
the S.P.'  And he smiled a little.

'Ought you to talk so much?' I asked.

'It doesn't matter when I can,' he answered,
'there are such a lot of things I want to say.  That
night when we were in the trench Sam said, "If
we get out of this alive I want to marry Emma, if
you've no objection, sir."

'"Who on earth," I said, "is Emma, Brown?"

'"Miss Margaret's parlourmaid, you know, sir."

'"Oh, the S.P., yes.  Well, Sam, why shouldn't
you if the lady's willing?"

'"If you've no objection, sir," he said again.

'"You're not by any chance asking for my
permission, are you, Sam?"

'"Yes, I am, sir."

'"Well, you have it," I replied, laughing.  "I
won't forbid the banns, and good luck, Sam, you
always were a funny ass."

'"Yes, sir, thank you, sir," he said—you know
his funny way, Meg, ah—it's coming—on again——'

And then a bout of pain, and although I loved
him so there was nothing I could do but watch
and wipe the pouring sweat and pray for God to
take him.  When it passed I offered him some
brandy, but he said,—

'No, keep it for the bad turns.'

Ah, God, was there worse than that?

He spoke of Michael and daddy, and his little
Gidg., and sent messages to Nannie and Charlie
and one or two others, and then suddenly there
was nothing in the world for him again but
pain, and I could only watch and wait and pray
and agonise.

The sister came in with some milk and food for
me, but as I shook my head she, with a glance of
pity at the bed, was taking it away when Ross opened
his eyes and signed for her to leave it.  He let me
sponge his face and hands but 'No, no brandy,
just a little water.'

'Is it too hard for you, Jonathan?' he whispered
as he saw that the glass trembled a little.  (Too
hard for me?  ah, Ross, always yourself last), and,
choking back the tears, I told him 'No.'

Presently, when he felt a little easier, he opened
his eyes and said, 'Eat your supper, darling,' but
as I shook my head he added, with a flash of his
old mastery,—

'Just the milk, little 'un.  I must send you away
if you don't.  Sit where I can see you, there by the
fire.  I told nurse you liked one at night, you
always felt so chilly.'

I drank the milk to please him, and ate a bit
of biscuit as he lay and watched me.  Then as I
crossed the room to kiss him he said,—

'You are so sweet when you obey one, and that
half biscuit was pure, unadulterated virtue, Meg!
How very "cowogated" it is to-night,' and he
laughed as he tried to stroke my hair, and as I
leaned over him he whispered,—

'Such a perfect little sister always, Jonathan.'

Then the agony again—suddenly his face
convulsed and he gasped out,—

'Stand away, somewhere where you cannot see
me.'  And he hid his face as I obeyed him.

I don't know if I stood long there by the fire,
with my back towards him, waiting, listening to
the shuddering sobs that shook him.  I could not
even pray, I could not feel the everlasting arms
were underneath, I only said in deep rebellion,
'This is not sent in love.'  Once I heard him sigh
as if in answer to a question, 'Yes, if you wish it,
Sir.'  And then a silence and the whisper of my
name.

I was frightened at the exhausted look upon his
face, and this time he took the brandy, and when
the dear, pain-clouded eyes had cleared a little he
whispered, and there were pauses in between the
words now,—

'Sorry, darling—remember—your—funny char.
Our Lady—of Ventre, Meg—you see, "it's—my
inside!" he said apologetically, and tried to
smile.  'Sponge me again—darling.'

Then he lay very quiet and tired, but presently
grew a little stronger, and said without opening
his eyes,—

'It's true about the everlasting arms, Meg.
I confessed to my Redeemer and I'm shriven,
tell daddy, don't forget.  I had the Holy
Communion, darling.  The Padre here is such a
good chap.  He lighted two tall candles, but
I couldn't blow 'em out, tell Aunt Amelia!' and his
eyes were twinkling when he opened them.  Then he
was quiet again, and after a moment said,—

'He is so perfect if one even *tries* to be dutiful.
I do adore Him so.'  And then, 'Tell me about the
garden.'

I told him all about the flowers, and which of
the roses were in bloom, and about Dame Nature
making the scent, and what Toby had said about
the stork.

'And is he coming, Meg?'

'Oh, Ross, I think I've heard the faintest far-off
flutter of his wings.'

'Give him my love,' he whispered.

'Who, darling?' I inquired, thinking he hadn't
understood.

'The little son,' he said.

Then he lay quiet, and as the day began to dawn
his hands grew damp.  The shadows seemed to
deepen on his face, and in his eyes there was a
strange and far-off look, as if he saw beyond the
present time, and gazed out into eternity.  It was
a very lovely, wondering look.

'Oh, all the pain has gone and somebody called
me then; was it the colonel, Meg?'

'But I could see the great change coming, and I
said I didn't think it was the colonel.

'There, he's called again, kiss me, darling,
quickly; are you ready, Sam?' he asked.

And then there broke a perfect glory on his face
and in his eyes a look of deep adoring love as,
turning rapturously to me, he said,—

'Why, Meg, I heard the Lord!'

And so I quickly kneeled, because only his dear,
dying ears had heard the quiet entry of that radiant
Presence in the room, as, with a little rapturous
intaking of his breath, he raised himself and
said,—

'Yes, coming, Sir,' and saw his 'Picture,' The
Beatific Vision.

And so the sister found us when she came;
and as I folded the dear, strong hands that never
did an unkind act, across the quiet heart that did
'adore Him so,' and closed the eyes which never
looked at me except in love, she said, gazing with
misty eyes upon his peace-filled face,—

'We see many types; *he* was a very gallant
Christian gentleman.'

She took me to that little room I had first waited in.

'He left you very specially in my charge,' she
said, 'because you've been so ill.  He asked me to
keep you if I could till some one came to fetch you
home.  There is a message just come through to
say Sir Jasper Fotheringham will be here at noon
in time to take you to——'

'Oh, will it be so soon?'

'It must, you see there are so many,' and her
face grew very tired.  'So, will you let me take
care of you till then?  See if you can rest.'  Presently
when she went away, God gave me His great gift
of tears.

When she came again, I asked for Sam, and,
sitting down beside me on the couch, she said,—

'I hardly know how to tell you, but just
at dawn he died.  He had been very ill all night
and wandering in his mind, and suddenly he called,
'Quite ready, Master Ross,' and—passed.'

But, not alone.  Who dares to say that such a
thing was chance, that such a perfect happening
was mere coincidence?  I think his faithful heart
answered his earthly master's call, and the two
walked up the starry way together, with that
sweet and gracious Presence in between.

.. vspace:: 2

Just before Uncle Jasper arrived the sister asked
me if I would like to see one of Ross's men.  So the
sergeant came of whom I had often heard; he was
very broken up.  I asked him to tell me anything
he could about the end.  I will try and put it down
in his own words.

'We all knew how devoted Brown was to the
captain.  We didn't exactly hate him ourselves,
ma'am, but he was Brown's own personal property,
according to his view.  He never would accept
promotion as he wanted to go on being his servant,
and there was always trouble if any one wanted to
have a hand at cleaning up the captain's things
or making him a bit more comfortable, if you can
be comfortable in hell, if you'll excuse the word,
ma'am.  We used to call him Brown's Archbishop,
if you'll not think it a liberty for me to name it,
ma'am?'

'Go on,' I said, 'I love to hear it.'

'Well, we was in a trench that night, with orders
to hold on no matter what it cost.  The Germans
got the range and we was pretty well wiped out
before they rushed it.  We was all dead beat and
wore out for want of sleep.  After they had rushed
it, Captain Fotheringham got some of the wounded
and the last remaining men, only five, I think,
together where the trench was narrowest, and he
told us again what the orders was, and how we must
still hold on, as time was everything, and that if
we could even now keep them back a bit the reliefs
might come up and so save a lot of lives.  I could
see he thought we hadn't got a dog's chance by the
kindness in his face.  He put us men behind him,
me next to him, in case he fell, so that I could
take command, and the two corporals behind me,
and Brown, being the only private, was at the
back, the last.  We waited, we could hear the
Huns coming down the trench, doing their devil's
work they was, killing the wounded as they lay.
Suddenly Brown pushed past me and the others
and went and stood in front of Captain Fotheringham.

'"Get behind me Brown," said the captain,
thinking, I suppose, he hadn't understood the order.
He was not the type of officer men disobey
deliberate, ma'am.  But Brown said,—

'"I will not, sir."

When the captain saw that Brown did not intend
to move, all the kindness went out of his eyes and
his face hardened, and with a kind of fury he
said,—

'"Are you mad, Brown?  Get behind me."

'"I will not, sir," said Brown again.

'The captain looked at him—you know how his
eyes go when he's very angry?

'"You refuse the order, Brown?"

'"Yes, I do, Master Ross."

'Then the captain's face suddenly softened and
he said,—

'"The last one, after all the years, Sam?"

'"No, *because* of all the years," said poor old
Brown.

'Then we saw the Germans coming round the
bend and the captain moved a step or two forward
where the trench was slightly wider, and for the
only time in all his soldier life he changed an
order.

"Oh, you funny old ass, Sam, you can stand
beside me, then."

'"Yes, sir, thank you, sir," said Brown; you
know his funny way, ma'am.

'Never saw such shooting, absolutely deadly,
first one shot and then the other, till there was a
pile of Germans blocking up the trench, and just as
the reliefs came up a shell came over and got them
both.'

The sergeant's voice broke and he cried quite
unashamedly.

Oh, can't you see them facing one another?
Sam, with his life's devotion in his eyes, defying
Ross.  King's Regulations and the Hickley Woods
striving for the last mastery: and then Sam, since
he might not save his master, glad that at least
he could stand beside his life-long friend and
comrade, in that great and last adventure—taking
equal odds.

Then Uncle Jasper came, and we left them lying
side by side in that quiet spot that is for ever
England, with just a little wood-encircled cross
to mark the place.

Then we went back to Devonshire, to my old
home, and I think my heart is broken.  I am
acquainted with grief now, as daddy said I
would be, but I do not know *His* love.  I am
rebellious, I can only feel His mastery in my pain.
I am not 'courteous,' as Ross was, or 'dutiful'
like father, for I have told that Man of
Sorrows—the Master of the Universe—that He has been
very cruel to me.





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.. _`CHAPTER 3-II`:

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   CHAPTER II

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  'All which I took from thee I did but take
   |  Not for thy harms.
   |  But just that thou mightst seek it in my arms.'
   |                                  *Hound of Heaven.*

.. vspace:: 2

It seems such a coincidence that Ross just missed
him after all, for when we arrived at the Manor
House I found my father!  He had landed the day
before and heard the news from dear Aunt
Constance.  What a homecoming for him!  He is little
changed, more bowed, perhaps, and he looks
older.  His face seems more aloof, as if he had not
only caught a glimpse of that 'most holy thing,'
but, like Sir Galahad, had 'achieved the quest.'

He held his hand out to me as I went in, and
said, 'My little girl.'  Then the others left us
for awhile together.  I do not think the years
out in that Mission have been easy ones, he looks
as if he, like his Lord, had suffered being tempted,
and he sorrows deeply for his son.  He is so unselfish,
so thoughtful, talks about the things that interest
Uncle Jasper, and takes away that terrible blank
feeling.  He even laughs a little, though I don't
think that his eyes have really smiled.  There is
a hurt look in them, as there was when mother died.

Every one is very sweet to me, but I am the
most wretched woman on this earth!  No, not
because of Ross.  How could I be for him, after
seeing his face when he said 'Coming, Sir.'  Although
I know that I shall never lose the ache to hear his
voice and see him in the flesh again, yet I could be
at peace were it not for one thing.  It is my soul
that's wrong.  It has been ever since that time I
stood beside the fire doubting the love of God,
and, oh, for months before.  Doubt is 'perilous
stuff'—'it weighs upon the heart.'

I am not sleeping very well, and as I lie awake
at night I think sometimes of all the others who
are grieving, too, and because I share the same
sorrowful 'experience'—because there is inscribed
upon my heart, as upon theirs, a list of names:
I find myself 'linked up' again—bound indissolubly
to each of them by a great sorrow, common to us all.

We have been in Devonshire a month now, and
still we do not talk of going back to Surrey.  It is
lovely to be staying with Aunt Constance, and I
am trying to be brave and cheerful, and to go out
in the village as I used to do.  The Gidger loves
the dear old cottage folk, and they love her, and
it is perfect having father.

The Hickley Woods are just as beautiful, only
my heart breaks when I walk about in them.

It has turned hot, even I am warm enough
and don't need fires at night.  This evening there
was a most gorgeous sunset, the sky was all
ablaze with emerald and blue and gold.  The
distant hills had a bloom on them such as there is
sometimes on bunches of purple grapes.

I saw father alone in the garden after dinner,
and I felt I wanted to tell him what I hoped about
the little son, so I went and stood beside him, and
slipped my arm through his, and we wandered out
into the woods as we have done many times before.

After I had told him, father said, with a very
tender look upon his face,—

'And so The Shepherd Beautiful is giving you
another of His lambs to mind.'

I thought it was such a perfect name for Him,
it appealed to me more at that moment than any
of the other lovely ones that daddy calls Him by.
After a little while father said,—

'Shall I tell you something, darling, that I have
never told any one before?'

'Please, father.'

'It was many years ago, quite soon after I
was married.  Your mother and I were walking
over the downs.  They were all "trimmed" with
sheep.  She was so amused at the lambs, because
she thought they were dreadfully impertinent to
their mothers sometimes, and then she said with
a sweet look in her eyes,—

'"Anthony, The Shepherd Beautiful is going
to give us one of His lambs to mind."

'Instead of being pleased I got in a sudden panic
about it, as husbands do sometimes, and your
mother laughed at me and shook my arm, and
looked round at all the sunny grasslands filled with
sheep and said,—

'"Oh, Anthony, don't grieve for me, because
it's only like walking in a sunny meadow dappled
with shade.  When I come to the shadow at the
end, I know that if I just walk round the corner,
I shall find the Shepherd Beautiful doling out
lambs.  Oh, Anthony" (and she shook my arm
again) "wouldn't it be amusing if the morning I
got there He was a bit absent-minded or got muddled
with His counting, and doled me out two instead
of one to mind.  Oh, I would run away so fast with
them lest He should ask for one of them back.'"

Then, after a pause, father added,—

'And you see, darling, He was a "bit absent-minded"
that morning, and now He's just asked
for one of them back.'

'Oh, father,' I exclaimed, with a sudden rush of
tears, 'and the one He's asked for back was always
called "the lamb"!'

And then the horror of that 'perilous stuff'
swept over me, and all the despair and doubt and
misery of the last few months surged up like a great
flood that presently would overwhelm me, and I
cried,—

'But, oh, daddy!  He isn't *my* Shepherd Beautiful,
I can't find His love; I can only see some one
who has been very cruel to me.'

And father put his arm round me as he used to
do when I was little and frightened in the woods,
and the evening sun streamed down upon his
face, and deepened the aloof look that he wore,
and he gazed out over the fields of lilies that were
tinted now with gold and rose.

'Yet, it is He who clothes the woods you love so
every spring, my darling.'

And as I looked at all the colour and the harmony,
the flowers, the sunlight, and the dappled shade,
the woods soothed and quietened me.  And
the old 'washed' feeling came, and the rebellion
went, and a great longing to understand God's
ways came in my heart instead.

'Oh, but the world's pain, father, and all the
grief brought by the war.'

'God calls the world that way sometimes, Meg.'

'But does He never call except through pain?'

'Some very perfect souls can feel Him "in the
summer air or in dewy garden green," or in the song
of birds, but to many it is only "when the sharp
strokes flesh and heart run through, in all their
incommunicable pain"—God speaks Himself.'

'And does He always call when He sends pain,
father?'

'It has so large a place in God's economy, my
darling, that we may find in it another Sacrament.
When the Great High Priest gives the bread of
tears, the wine of separation, there is, in these
visible things, His inward call to come closer to
Himself.  Oh, little daughter, when you can find
His love in nothing else, look at Calvary, for there
the perfect Saviour deigned to stoop to a last
service—"Love's epitome."'

And so I 'looked' at Him upon His cross, as daddy
bade me, and realised for the first time that as
God's justice has been satisfied, there is nothing
left but His love for me.

I saw, all in a moment, that if God loved me
enough to give His Son, and if His Son loved me
enough to give His life, He will not keep back any
other gift.  He is all love, so all He sends to me is
Love.  He cannot help Himself.

I am all broken up to think that I so nearly
missed a gift of love because He sent it veiled to
me in pain.

Out in the Hickley Woods I found Him.  Down
the paths of my life I suddenly saw the way of His
feet, and my soul rushed out to meet Him.

At last I know the lesson that Ross learned by
pain.  I see what Charlie saw only when he was
blind.  I understand what father has known
since mother died.  Oh, the wonder and the
utter perfection of this 'experience.'  It links me
up with all the others down the centuries who
having found *Him* 'in a mist of tears' can *glory*
in their pain.  If only I could pass the lovely
comfort of it on to some of those whose hearts are
wounded, as mine is, inexpressibly and beyond
all telling, by this awful war:—

He only takes away the ones we love if, in His
all wise love, He sees He must.  If we accept the
atonement that He made, and love Him, and are
dutiful to Him about the ones He takes.  He will
always give instead that incomparably more lovely,
priceless, perfect, altogether lovely one—Himself.

.. vspace:: 2

And now this funny old book is finished.  As I
write the words my room grows dark, because the
sun is hidden for a moment by a cloud of rain.  Yet
all the tender plants out in the woods will be the
stronger for the storm, when it has passed.

I look into the future, and I see that there remains
for me one last 'experience.'

Some day, perhaps when I am very old, I shall
walk down a valley shadowed with dark wings.
Beside me will be one—that mighty one—whose
face is cold and quiet, majestic and inexorable.
I shall not fear him as the darkness deepens in
that vale, for all around, by reason of the Passion
of my Lord, there will be a song of triumph sung:—

   |  'Oh death! where is thy sting?
   |  And where thy victory?'
   |

And at the end of that dark night I, too, shall
find the morning.  I shall greet Ross again.  I
shall see mother, and the others who have gone
before.  I shall in one ecstatic moment, find
myself—'linked up' with God.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center small

   LONDON AND GLASGOW: COLLINS' CLEAR-TYPE PRESS.

.. vspace:: 6

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