Clovis spent a moment or two in a.s.similating the astonishing news; then he broke out into unstinted congratulation. If he had belonged to a more emotional race he would probably have kissed Mrs. Mullet.
"How wonderfully lucky to have pulled it off at last! Now you can buy a decent animal. I"ve always said that Toby was clever. Ever so many congratulations."
"Don"t congratulate me. It"s the most unfortunate thing that could have happened!" said Mrs. Mullet dramatically.
Clovis stared at her in amazement.
"Mr. Penricarde," said Mrs. Mullet, sinking her voice to what she imagined to be an impressive whisper, though it rather resembled a hoa.r.s.e, excited squeak, "Mr. Penricarde has just begun to pay attentions to Jessie. Slight at first, but now unmistakable. I was a fool not to have seen it sooner. Yesterday, at the Rectory garden party, he asked her what her favourite flowers were, and she told him carnations, and to-day a whole stack of carnations has arrived, clove and malmaison and lovely dark red ones, regular exhibition blooms, and a box of chocolates that he must have got on purpose from London. And he"s asked her to go round the links with him to-morrow. And now, just at this critical moment, Toby has sold him that animal. It"s a calamity!"
"But you"ve been trying to get the horse off your hands for years," said Clovis.
"I"ve got a houseful of daughters," said Mrs. Mullet, "and I"ve been trying-well, not to get them off my hands, of course, but a husband or two wouldn"t be amiss among the lot of them; there are six of them, you know."
"I don"t know," said Clovis, "I"ve never counted, but I expect you"re right as to the number; mothers generally know these things."
"And now," continued Mrs. Mullet, in her tragic whisper, "when there"s a rich husband-in-prospect imminent on the horizon Toby goes and sells him that miserable animal. It will probably kill him if he tries to ride it; anyway it will kill any affection he might have felt towards any member of our family. What is to be done? We can"t very well ask to have the horse back; you see, we praised it up like anything when we thought there was a chance of his buying it, and said it was just the animal to suit him."
"Couldn"t you steal it out of his stable and send it to gra.s.s at some farm miles away?" suggested Clovis; "write "Votes for Women" on the stable door, and the thing would pa.s.s for a Suffragette outrage. No one who knew the horse could possibly suspect you of wanting to get it back again."
"Every newspaper in the country would ring with the affair," said Mrs.
Mullet; "can"t you imagine the headline, "Valuable Hunter Stolen by Suffragettes"? The police would scour the countryside till they found the animal."
"Well, Jessie must try and get it back from Penricarde on the plea that it"s an old favourite. She can say it was only sold because the stable had to be pulled down under the terms of an old repairing lease, and that now it has been arranged that the stable is to stand for a couple of years longer."
"It sounds a queer proceeding to ask for a horse back when you"ve just sold him," said Mrs. Mullet, "but something must be done, and done at once. The man is not used to horses, and I believe I told him it was as quiet as a lamb. After all, lambs go kicking and twisting about as if they were demented, don"t they?"
"The lamb has an entirely unmerited character for sedateness," agreed Clovis.
Jessie came back from the golf links next day in a state of mingled elation and concern.
"It"s all right about the proposal," she announced; "he came out with it at the sixth hole. I said I must have time to think it over. I accepted him at the seventh."
"My dear," said her mother, "I think a little more maidenly reserve and hesitation would have been advisable, as you"ve known him so short a time. You might have waited till the ninth hole."
"The seventh is a very long hole," said Jessie; "besides, the tension was putting us both off our game. By the time we"d got to the ninth hole we"d settled lots of things. The honeymoon is to be spent in Corsica, with perhaps a flying visit to Naples if we feel like it, and a week in London to wind up with. Two of his nieces are to be asked to be bridesmaids, so with our lot there will be seven, which is rather a lucky number. You are to wear your pearl grey, with any amount of Honiton lace jabbed into it. By the way, he"s coming over this evening to ask your consent to the whole affair. So far all"s well, but about the Brogue it"s a different matter. I told him the legend about the stable, and how keen we were about buying the horse back, but he seems equally keen on keeping it. He said he must have horse exercise now that he"s living in the country, and he"s going to start riding to-morrow. He"s ridden a few times in the Row, on an animal that was accustomed to carry octogenarians and people undergoing rest cures, and that"s about all his experience in the saddle-oh, and he rode a pony once in Norfolk, when he was fifteen and the pony twenty-four; and to-morrow he"s going to ride the Brogue! I shall be a widow before I"m married, and I do so want to see what Corsica"s like; it looks so silly on the map."
Clovis was sent for in haste, and the developments of the situation put before him.
"n.o.body can ride that animal with any safety," said Mrs. Mullet, "except Toby, and he knows by long experience what it is going to shy at, and manages to swerve at the same time."
"I did hint to Mr. Penricarde-to Vincent, I should say-that the Brogue didn"t like white gates," said Jessie.
"White gates!" exclaimed Mrs. Mullet; "did you mention what effect a pig has on him? He"ll have to go past Lockyer"s farm to get to the high road, and there"s sure to be a pig or two grunting about in the lane."
"He"s taken rather a dislike to turkeys lately," said Toby.
"It"s obvious that Penricarde mustn"t be allowed to go out on that animal," said Clovis, "at least not till Jessie has married him, and tired of him. I tell you what: ask him to a picnic to-morrow, starting at an early hour; he"s not the sort to go out for a ride before breakfast. The day after I"ll get the rector to drive him over to Crowleigh before lunch, to see the new cottage hospital they"re building there. The Brogue will be standing idle in the stable and Toby can offer to exercise it; then it can pick up a stone or something of the sort and go conveniently lame. If you hurry on the wedding a bit the lameness fiction can be kept up till the ceremony is safely over."
Mrs. Mullet belonged to an emotional race, and she kissed Clovis.
It was n.o.body"s fault that the rain came down in torrents the next morning, making a picnic a fantastic impossibility. It was also n.o.body"s fault, but sheer ill-luck, that the weather cleared up sufficiently in the afternoon to tempt Mr. Penricarde to make his first essay with the Brogue. They did not get as far as the pigs at Lockyer"s farm; the rectory gate was painted a dull un.o.btrusive green, but it had been white a year or two ago, and the Brogue never forgot that he had been in the habit of making a violent curtsey, a back-pedal and a swerve at this particular point of the road. Subsequently, there being apparently no further call on his services, he broke his way into the rectory orchard, where he found a hen turkey in a coop; later visitors to the orchard found the coop almost intact, but very little left of the turkey.
Mr. Penricarde, a little stunned and shaken, and suffering from a bruised knee and some minor damages, good-naturedly ascribed the accident to his own inexperience with horses and country roads, and allowed Jessie to nurse him back into complete recovery and golf-fitness within something less than a week.
In the list of wedding presents which the local newspaper published a fortnight or so later appeared the following item:
"Brown saddle-horse, "The Brogue," bridegroom"s gift to bride."
"Which shows," said Toby Mullet, "that he knew nothing."
"Or else," said Clovis, "that he has a very pleasing wit."
THE HEN
"Dora Bittholz is coming on Thursday," said Mrs. Sangrail.
"This next Thursday?" asked Clovis
His mother nodded.
"You"ve rather done it, haven"t you?" he chuckled; "Jane Martlet has only been here five days, and she never stays less than a fortnight, even when she"s asked definitely for a week. You"ll never get her out of the house by Thursday."
"Why should I?" asked Mrs. Sangrail; "she and Dora are good friends, aren"t they? They used to be, as far as I remember."
"They used to be; that"s what makes them all the more bitter now. Each feels that she has nursed a viper in her bosom. Nothing fans the flame of human resentment so much as the discovery that one"s bosom has been utilised as a snake sanatorium."
"But what has happened? Has some one been making mischief?"
"Not exactly," said Clovis; "a hen came between them."
"A hen? What hen?"
"It was a bronze Leghorn or some such exotic breed, and Dora sold it to Jane at a rather exotic price. They both go in for prize poultry, you know, and Jane thought she was going to get her money back in a large family of pedigree chickens. The bird turned out to be an abstainer from the egg habit, and I"m told that the letters which pa.s.sed between the two women were a revelation as to how much invective could be got on to a sheet of notepaper."
"How ridiculous!" said Mrs. Sangrail. "Couldn"t some of their friends compose the quarrel?"
"People tried," said Clovis, "but it must have been rather like composing the storm music of the "Fliegende Hollander." Jane was willing to take back some of her most libellous remarks if Dora would take back the hen, but Dora said that would be owning herself in the wrong, and you know she"d as soon think of owning slum property in Whitechapel as do that."
"It"s a most awkward situation," said Mrs. Sangrail. "Do you suppose they won"t speak to one another?"
"On the contrary, the difficulty will be to get them to leave off. Their remarks on each other"s conduct and character have hitherto been governed by the fact that only four ounces of plain speaking can be sent through the post for a penny."
"I can"t put Dora off," said Mrs. Sangrail. "I"ve already postponed her visit once, and nothing short of a miracle would make Jane leave before her self-allotted fortnight is over."