The Laurel Walk. Molesworth Mrs.
first money I can lay hands on. You don’t suppose I didn’t notice your shabby gloves last Sunday?”
“Oh, what does it matter in winter?” said Frances indifferently. “One can always use a muff.”
“When you’ve got one to use,” said Eira. “Mine looks more fit to be a mouse’s nest than anything else.”
Betty had been standing at the window, gazing out at the oval grass plot, not imposing enough to be dignified by the name of lawn, and at the shrubberies enclosing it.
“Do you see those berries?” she said, wheeling round as she spoke. “If only all the bushes were not so dreadfully wet still, I could make up some lovely bunches and trails for the drawing-room vases, if mamma would let me.”
“It will be dry enough by the afternoon,” said Frances, “or we may find some treasures on our way through the grounds, without having to paddle over wet grass to reach them.”
“The best plan,” said Eira, “is to arrange the vases first, and then let mamma see the effect. It doesn’t do to ask leave beforehand, for if we do we are sure to be told not to fill the house with rubbish and weeds. Bring in the prettiest things you can find, Betty, and we’ll do them after luncheon. It will help to pass the afternoon for poor me. Oh dear! things are never so bad but they might be worse. I’m beginning to feel now as if life would be worth having if only I could go a good long walk! And before my chilblains got bad, I didn’t think anything could be duller or drearier than the way we were going on.”
“We’ll try to bring you in some lovely berries and tinted leaves to cheer you,” said Frances, but Betty’s next remark did not follow up her elder sister’s determined effort to make the best of things.
“What’s the good?” she said lugubriously, “what’s the good of trying to make the drawing-room look better? It’s hopelessly ugly, and even if we could make it pretty, who would care? There’s nobody to see it.”
“Come now, Betty,” said Frances, “don’t be untrue to your own belief. Beauty of any kind is always worth having. Let us be thankful that, living in the country, we never can be without the possibility of some, even in our indoor life. What would you do, Betty, if we lived in a grey – no, drab-coloured – street in some terrible town?”
“Do? I should die!” replied Betty.
“I shouldn’t,” said Eira. “I’d get to know some people, and that, after all, is more interesting than still life. But the present question is what shall I do with myself all this long morning?”
“You must stay in a warm room, whatever you do, if you want to cure those poor hands and feet. The only thing you can do is to read, and oh! by-the-by, I was forgetting – I got one or two books at the lending library yesterday that I want to look through before I read them aloud. I think they seem rather interesting. So if you can glance at one of them for me this morning it would really be a help.”
Eira brightened up a little at this, and before her sisters left her, they had the satisfaction of seeing her comfortably established on the old sofa.
“Yes,” she said, as they nodded good-bye from the doorway, “I repeat, things never are so bad but that they might be worse. We might have a dining-room without a sofa.”
Frances and Betty, despite their curiosity to spy the state of the land – that is to say, of the big house – at close quarters, had to make their way to the village this morning by the road, as one of their mother’s messages took them to the laundress’ cottage which stood at some little distance from the Craig-Morion grounds. Further on, however, they passed the lodge, and there for a moment they halted, on the chance of a word with the old gate-keeper. But she was evidently not there and the gates were still locked.
“What a good thing we didn’t come through the grounds,” said Betty. “But what can have become of old Webb and his wife? There must be something agog, Francie.”
“We shall see on our way back,” her sister replied; “they’re sure to come home for their dinner.”
“If they don’t,” said Betty, “I shall try to climb the gates, and invent some excuse for going up to the house to see what they are about.”
But fate was not so cruel; for assuredly, with all the good-will in the world and disregard of appearances, Miss Elizabeth Morion could never have succeeded in scaling the entrance.
An hour or two later, when Frances had dutifully accomplished her self-imposed task of reading to Gillybrand, a pitifully uncomplaining, almost entirely blind old man, and had picked up Betty at the village reading-room, which the sisters often found a convenient rendezvous, the two made their way back to the lodge, where their misgivings were agreeably dispersed.
For not only were the gates unlocked – they stood hospitably open, while traces of the wheels of some tradesman’s cart were clearly to be seen on the still damp gravel; and standing at the door of her little abode was old Mrs Webb, her wrinkled face aglow with excitement, and lighting up with increased satisfaction as she caught sight of the young ladies – newcomers on whom she might bestow some of the news which was evidently too important to be suppressed.
But it was Betty who began the colloquy.
“What have you been about, Mrs Webb,” she said, teasingly, “locking the gates so early last night, and opening them so late this morning? You must have been asleep half the day as well as the night!”
“Bless you, no, miss,” said the old woman, eagerly. “Quite the contrary, I do assure you. We was working hard up at the big house last night, and this morning too, was me and Webb, for never a girl, let alone a woman, could he get to help us. And no wonder neither, with such short notice to get two or three rooms ready by to-night, and the rest of the house dusted up for the gentlemen as is coming down to stay for a day or two.”
“Gentleman?” exclaimed the sisters. “Who? Not Mr Morion?”
“No, miss, not the master himself, but friends of his. First there was a telegraph, and this morning a letter. I’d show them to you, but Webb’s got them in his pocket,” and she jerked her head in the direction of the house. “I’ve just run down to open the gates for the butcher and the other carts from the village, for I’ve got to have dinner for eight o’clock to-night, so you may fancy we’ve had to bustle about.”
“Do you know the gentlemen’s names?” asked Betty, eagerly.
“Mr Milner for one,” said Mrs Webb, at which the sisters’ faces fell. “But the other’s a Mr – no, to be sure, I’ve forgotten it; but it’s some gentleman as is thinking of taking the place for a while!”
Chapter Three
Mr Milne and Another
Luncheon at Fir Cottage was not an attractive meal. Perhaps the least so of the three principal repasts of the day. There was a certain flavour of early dinner about it, recalling the days of the sisters’ childhood, when roast mutton and rice pudding formed, with but little variety, the pièce de résistance of the daily menu, though for Mr Morion himself there was usually some special and more attractive little dish.
But to-day the walk in the fresh invigorating air had given the two elder sisters a satisfactory appetite, in which, chilblains notwithstanding, Eira was seldom deficient.
Frances and Betty had returned only just in time enough to make their appearance punctually in the dining-room, and in the first interest of hearing how her commissions had been executed, Lady Emma forgot to question them as to the result of their intended inquiries at the Craig-Morion Lodge. Not so Eira. She was fuming with impatience all the time that Frances was repeating the laundress’ excuses for the faulty condition in which Mr Morion’s shirt-fronts had been sent home, or Betty explaining, for her part, the reason why she had brought a packet of oblong instead of square postcards. Eira’s opportunity came at last.
“And what about the big house?” she exclaimed.
“Oh, yes,” said her mother, eagerly enough; for which her youngest daughter mentally blessed her,