Take me away, somebody, before I break down altogether, and show me some of the old haunts until tea is ready."
"Peggy, don"t be absurd!" Esther said solemnly; but Peggy marched determinedly out of the room, and, with the exception of Mr and Mrs Asplin and Arthur, every one followed and stood looking on while she pushed open the swing door of the cloak-room, and poked her little head round the corner.
"Where"s my peg?" she cried. "If I find any other wretched creature"s clothes hanging on my peg, I"ll--" then she stopped suddenly, darted forward with a squeal of delight, and closed the door behind her. She was not hidden more than a minute, but in effect it seemed to have been a long, long time, for when the door reopened, the French hat had disappeared, and it was the real old Peggy-Pickle who smiled and nodded and peaked her brows beneath the scarlet cap.
"The Tam o" Shanter! Rob has brought it back after all these years. He kept it until you could wear it again. Goodness, how touching! I never thought _you_ would turn sentimental, Rob!" cried Mellicent the tactless, and the next moment devoutly wished she had held her peace, as Rob scowled, Esther pinched her arm, and Peggy trod on her toe with automatic promptness. She turned on her heel and strode back to the dining-room, while Peggy flicked the cap off her head, trying hard to look unconscious, and to continue her investigations as if nothing embarra.s.sing had occurred.
"There"s the old stain on the floor where I spilt the ink, and the little marks all the way upstairs where the corners of my box took off the paint. Dear, dear, how home-like they look! I must see cook after tea, and Diddums, my sweet little kitten. How is the darling? As pretty and fluffy and playful as ever?"
"Peggy dear, do _not_ be silly!"
"Esther dear, I cannot help it! I"m too happy to be sensible. Let me be silly for just one day. _What_, is that Diddums? That ugly, lanky, old cat? You"ve aged terribly, Diddums, since I saw you last. Ah me, ah me, the years tell on us all! Tell me, dear--be faithful!--are you as much shocked at the change in _me_?"
Peggy looked up archly, and met Rob"s deep, earnest gaze. She put down the cat, rose suddenly, and thrust her hand through Esther"s arm. Her cheeks were very pink, her eyes astonishingly bright. Esther looked at her critically, and pursed up her lips in disapproving fashion.
Certainly Peggy had grown into a very pretty girl, but it was a thousand pities that she had not yet outgrown the eccentricities of her youth.
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
When Peggy had been staying a week at the vicarage, her parents came down from town on a two days" visit, especially arranged to give them an opportunity of looking over Yew Hedge. Colonel Saville"s scant supply of patience was fast giving out beneath the strain of disappointment, and he declared his intention of buying the first habitable house he saw, while his wife and daughter were reluctantly forced to the conclusion that it was impossible to procure an ancestral estate at the price of a suburban villa. Yew Hedge, therefore, appeared the refuge of the dest.i.tute, and a fly being hired from the village inn, and Mrs Asplin invited to take the fourth seat, the little party drove off to inspect the house in mingled hope and fear.
The thick hedge which gave the name to the house skirted the country road for some hundreds of yards, while a carriage drive of commonplace propriety led up to a square stone house, which could by no possibility have been termed either beautiful or picturesque. Mrs Saville"s face fell into an expression of martyr-like despair, and the colonel looked fierce and frowning; but, like many good things, and people also, Yew Hedge showed its worst points on the surface, and modestly hid its Virtues out of sight. There was a large flower and vegetable garden behind the house, the entrance hall was roomy with an old-fashioned fireplace in the corner, the drawing-room contained an abundance of those nooks and corners beloved of modern decorators, and Peggy fairly capered about with exultation when she entered the dining-room and beheld panelled oak walls and a frescoed ceiling.
"Father, it"s settled! We take this house on the spot. These walls decide it. Think how inspiring it will be to live our lives against a background of carved oak!" she cried in a rapture, and the colonel tugged at his moustache with a smile of complacent satisfaction.
"Looks about right, Peg, doesn"t it? That Indian furniture would look well in here, and the old delf. We"ll put all the delf here, I fancy, and--"
"And have blue walls in the drawing-room--blue paper and white wood, and a touch of yellow in the draperies. I saw some brocade at Liberty"s which would be the very thing!" chimed in his wife, while Mrs Asplin gasped and looked askance at the extraordinary trio who began to discuss the furnishings of a house before they had even ascended the staircase.
She coughed in a deprecatory manner, and said:
"The reception rooms are certainly fine--they have always been considered the strong point of the house, but the bedroom accommodation is not nearly so good. There are fewer rooms than you would expect, and they are mostly small. I"m afraid you will be disappointed when you see them."
"If there are three or four decent rooms, that is all we need. I want my home for myself, and not for a crowd of visitors. One spare room, or two at most, is all I would have furnished if there were a dozen empty.
Give me retirement and a quiet home life!" cried the colonel, whereat his wife and daughter exchanged glances of amus.e.m.e.nt, for if ever there lived a man who adored his fellow-creatures, and delighted in crowding his house from floor to ceiling with unexpected guests, that man was Colonel Saville, and would be until his death.
Mrs Asplin understood the meaning of that glance, and giving up the colonel as a hopeless case, addressed herself instead to his wife.
"And I am afraid the pantry is poor, and the scullery also. Mrs Selby used to complain of them and of the lack of conveniences. There are no cupboards, and the--"
It was of no use. Mrs Saville was as intractable as her husband, and refused to listen to any warning.
"Dear Mrs Asplin," she said sweetly, "I don"t know anything about cupboards. We never worried about these things in India; the servants managed somehow, and I presume they can manage here. The entertaining rooms are large enough to take in our furniture, and Peggy likes them.
Those are the great points which we have to consider. If there are enough bedrooms to take us in, I think we shall be satisfied."
This Saville trio was the most impracticable party of house-hunters whom the vicar"s wife had ever known, and she wondered no longer at the difficulty they had experienced in finding a house to their taste, when she noted the spirit in which they surveyed the present premises. A convenience was not a convenience at all if it interfered with a fad or fancy, and a serious drawback was hailed with delight if it appeared in quaint or unexpected fashion. As a matter of fact, the purchase of the house had been a foregone conclusion, since the moment when Peggy had beheld the oak walls of the dining-room, and within twenty-four hours from that moment it was a concluded fact.
Ah, then and there was hurrying to and fro, and endless journeys up to town, and interviews with obstinate decorators, who would insist on obtruding their own ideas, and battles waged with British workmen, who could not understand why one shade of a colour was not as good as another, or wherein lay the deadly necessity that they should match.
Peggy put a penny in the slot and weighed herself on the machine at the station every second or third day, to verify her statement that she was wasting to a shadow beneath the nervous strain. She was left at the vicarage in order to superintend the workmen, while Colonel and Mrs Saville stayed in town to interview furniture dealers and upholsterers; and every morning she walked over to Yew Hedge and made a procession round the rooms, to note what progress had been made since the day before. Half-a-dozen men were at work, or, to be strictly accurate, were _engaged_ to work, at the house; but beyond the fact that it grew steadily dirtier and dirtier, and that the splashes of whitewash and shavings of paper stretched further and further down the drive, it was difficult to see what progress was being made.
Then Peggy made a desperate resolve, begged a bundle of sandwiches from the old cook, packed it with sundry other properties in a basket, and announced her intention of spending the day at Yew Hedge, and keeping the men up to their work by the influence of her presence. Mrs Asplin laughed at the idea of their being awed by anything so small and dainty, but small as she was Miss Peggy had contrived to instil a very wholesome awe of herself among the workmen. She never expressed open disapproval, and was invariably courteous in manner, but there was a sting in her stately speeches which made them wince, though they would have found it difficult to explain the reason of their discomfiture. On the present occasion the usual group of idlers was discovered lazing in the hall when the little white figure appeared suddenly among them. They flushed and slouched away, but the young lady was all smiles and amiability.
"Good-morning!" she cried. "I have brought my tools with me to-day, for I am going to stay and garden. If you can spare the time, I shall be much obliged if you will boil some water for me later on, but it will do when you make your own tea. Don"t let me interrupt your work! I shall be in the garden, if you want to consult me at any time, so we shall all be busy together!"
The abashed faces stared at her in a solid wall of discomfiture, and Peggy retreated hastily, and paused behind a harberry fence to have her laugh out, before repairing to the shed where the gardening tools were stored. Then she unrolled an ap.r.o.n, tied it over her skirt, rolled up her sleeves to protect the starched little cuffs, took a rake in one hand and a hoe in the other, and surveyed the prospect. With ambition untempered by ignorance, she had openly avowed her intention of possessing the finest flowers in the county, and giving an object-lesson in gardening to ignorant professors of the art, so that it was more than time to begin preparation.
"The finest garden in the county!" Even allowing for the prejudices of possession, it was impossible to bestow such a t.i.tle upon Yew Hedge in its present unkempt condition. The house had been unlet for two years, during which time the gra.s.s had grown coa.r.s.e and rank, wallflowers and forget-me-nots were dying a lingering death in the borders, and nothing was coming on to take their place. It was not the first time that Peggy had given her mind to this subject, but so far she had not succeeded in finding a solution of the difficulty, nor had the suggestion of the village gardener met with her approval.
"It"s bedding-out as you want," he had explained. "You must bed out.
That"s the tastiest thing for those "ere round beds, and the tidiest too. They last well on into the autumn, if it comes in no sharp frosts.
There"s nothing like them for lasting!"
"Like _what_? Do you mean geraniums?"
"Ay, geraniums for sure, and calcies, and lobelias, and a nice little hedge of pyrethrum. Can"t do better than that, can yer? Geraniums in the centre,"--he drew a circle on the ground with the end of his stick, and prodded little holes here and there to ill.u.s.trate his plan. "A nice patch of red, then comes yellar, then the blue, then the green. In circles or in rows, according as you please."
"I seem to have seen it somewhere! I have certainly seen it," mused Peggy solemnly, so solemnly, that the poor man took her words in good faith, and looked at her with wondering pity.
"I should say you "ad! You couldn"t travel far without seein" of "em in the summer time. There"s nuthin" else to see in a manner of speaking, for they all "as "em. "Igh and low, gentle and simple."
"Then I won"t!" quoth Peggy unexpectedly. "Henceforth, Bevan, when sightseers come to the neighbourhood, send them up to Yew Hedge to inspect the one garden in England which does not go in for bedding-out!
If I want fireworks, I"ll have them in gunpowder on the fifth of November, but not in flowers if I know it! It"s an insult to Nature to rule a garden in lines and transform a bed into a mathematical figure!"
The old gardener looked at her more in sorrow than in anger, and shook his head dejectedly as he went back to his work. He had the gravest doubts about the sanity of a young lady who objected to "bedding-out;"
but if Peggy gained no approval from him for her new-fangled notions, she reaped her reward in Rob"s unaffected delight, when the conversation was detailed for his benefit.
"Bravo, Mariquita!" he cried. "I recognise in you the instinct of the true gardener--a rare thing, let me tell you, to find in a woman. Women like show and colour, a big effect, rather than interesting detail, but I"m thankful to find you are an exception. Come over to-morrow and see _my_ garden! I keep a corner for myself at the end of the shrubbery, and forbid any of the men to touch it, and I flatter myself I have some treasures you won"t find in any other garden in England. I brought them home from my travels, and have coaxed them to grow by looking after them myself and studying their little ways. They need a lot of care, and get sulky if they are not humoured, but it"s the whole interest of gardening to master these little eccentricities."
"Just my sentiments!" cried Peggy; but when in due time Rob escorted her to see his precious garden, her face was blank with disappointment. Two straggling beds with a rockery filling up the corner, and scarcely a gleam of colour from one end to another! That at least was the effect from a distance, but as the proprietor pointed out his treasures, insignificant little blossoms were distinguishable among the greenery, and flowers the size of a threepenny piece were produced proudly from lurking-places and exhibited for admiration. They all came from some unheard-of spots at the other side of nowhere, had been reared with prodigious difficulty, and were of such rarity and value that the heads of public gardens had paid special pilgrimage to The Larches in order to behold them. Peggy"s eyebrows went up in a peak, and her face lengthened, but it was no use, she could not be enthusiastic, could not even affect an interest in the struggling little lives.
After exclaiming: "How strange!" "How odd!" and "Fancy that!" a dozen times in succession, her very powers of exclamation seemed to depart, and she was reduced to sighs and grunts of response. In the middle of the history of a jungle plant which was the glory of the collection, Rob suddenly lifted his head and put a startling question:
"Are you interested? Do you care to hear about it?"
Peggy looked at him and made a little sign of apology.
"Not--_much_, Rob! It"s curious, of course, but very "niggly," don"t you think? It makes no effect at all in the bed."
Rob rose from his knees, flicked the dust off his trousers, and cleared his throat in that dry sepulchral manner which people adopt when they long to say something sharp and cutting, but are too high-minded to allow themselves to do so. Then he pushed his cap back from his head, whistled three bars of a popular tune, and said politely:
"There are some pink peonies coming out in the drive. Better come along and see them."
"Robert Darcy, I will--not--be--patronised!" cried Peggy, flashing indignant eyes upon him from the alt.i.tude of his highest waistcoat b.u.t.ton. "Don"t pink peony me, if you please! If it comes to a matter of taste, I prefer my own to yours. You have an interesting museum, sir, but, allow me to tell you, a most inadequate garden!"
Then Rob was obliged to laugh, and in that laugh lost the last trace of vexation.
"Sorry, Peg! I"m a crusty beggar, but it"s your own fault if I expected too much. You were always so patient with my hobbies that I thought you would be interested in this too. I"ll do penance for baring you by helping to arrange your garden in the way you _do_ like. We"ll draw out our plans together, or rather you shall give the orders, and I"ll do the work. Any leading ideas to offer?"