"The Love Story of a Bachelor" (continued 2)

Mr Musgrave would have been surprised could he have penetrated Mrs Chadwick’s opinion of himself. Mrs Chadwick had formed an opinion early in their intercourse; she saw no reason to modify it later; and she was confirmed in it when she read some of his sonnets in the carefully preserved back numbers of the Parish Magazine. There were sonnets to the different seasons; sonnets to childhood, to youth, to flowers, to a cloud effect in a windswept sky, and to the autumnal tints. There was not, in the whole, she observed without surprise, a single reference to love. Verse-making without that essential quality must be a difficult process, she reflected. Had Byron possessed John Musgrave’s temperament, it is doubtful that he would have attained to immortality. John Musgrave with a touch of the Byronic weakness might have been interesting, and would certainly have been lovable. Coldness of itself is scarcely a virtue, nor is it an endearing characteristic. The man possessed of a big heart and a quite legitimate inclination towards the opposite sex is human; and Mrs Chadwick loved humanity.

The most human types she had as yet discovered in Moresby were those of the vicar and his wife, and Robert. Robert and the new mistress of the Hall were allies. Robert held the sex, as a sex, in contempt; that was the code of his class; and a very pronounced dread of the length of Hannah’s tongue, added to a proper recognition of Hannah’s muscular development, had accomplished little towards mitigating this sense of masculine superiority. He considered the utterance of Saint Paul, that it is better to marry than to burn, the most supreme wisdom that a man has ever given expression to. On Occasions he was a little doubtful whether it were not better to burn. He had tried marriage, but he had not tried burning, and so could not give a definite opinion. But for Mrs Chadwick he entertained an unbounded respect. Robert perhaps had a touch of the Byronic temperament; and Mrs Chadwick on coming out of church had given him one of her radiant smiles. Subsequently she stopped him in the road and chatted with him in an easy, intimate way that Robert described as “haffable.” She began by asking him if he had a wife. Robert admitted this possession reluctantly; and, upon further inquiries, owned with even less enthusiasm to a son.

“Only one?” she said.

“One’s more’n enough for me,” Robert answered sourly. “Brought up respectable, ’e was, and confirmed under Mr Errol; and then,” Robert jerked his thumb over his shoulder as though in indication of the direction the errant youth had followed, “’e takes up with a young woman, and turns Plymouth Brother to please ’er. Preaches, ’e does... they mostly do. Dresses ’isself up, and tramps five miles, and ’ollers to a lot more of ’em about their sins. Disgraceful, that’s wot I calls it.”

“Perhaps he thinks he is doing good,” she suggested.

Robert smiled grimly.

“Precious little good ’e ever done, or ever will do, mum. And ’is preaching! You should ’ear ’im.”

“Do you tramp five miles to hear him preach?” she asked.

“Wot, me? And wot would the vicar do without me, do you suppose? I ’ear quite enough without going to ’is old meeting-place. ’E practises ’is old sarmons night-times, after me and the missis is a-bed. You’d reckon it was a nuisance if ’e waked you up, as he wakes me and Hannah in the dead o’ night sometimes, screeching an’ ’ollering. ‘Is your Lord deaf?’ I asks en; ‘because if ’E be, us bain’t,’ I says, ‘and us can’t sleep for your noise.’ ’E’s gone away now. Got a job at a farm near ’is young woman; an’ I ’opes ’e stops there. I don’t ’old wi’ religion outside o’ church, and then I likes it shortened like. Our vicar is the best vicar Moresby’s ever ’ad, but ’e do make ’is sarmons long. Seems I could say as much as ’e do in ’alf the time.”

Mrs Chadwick laughed. Robert’s garrulity would seem to discredit this conceit.

“I like his sermons, Robert,” she said. “I’m glad I am going to live at Moresby. Later I shall visit Mrs Robert, if you think she won’t mind.”

“She won’t mind, mum,” Robert answered. “She’ll be proud. I’m not sure it won’t make ’er over proud,” he added reflectively. “Hannah gets obstroperous when she’s took notice of. Better let ’er think you come to see me, I reckon.”

She nodded brightly, and left him standing in the roadway looking after her retreating figure, and from it to the shining coins lying in the horny hollow of his palm. Perhaps it was due less to the Byronic temperament than to the natural love of every loyal subject for the King’s portrait set in silver that Mrs Chadwick won from thenceforth Robert’s unshakable respect. Being a man actuated by occasional chivalrous promptings, he drank to her good health conscientiously during the following days. But from a fear of making Hannah “obstroperous” he refrained from mentioning that interview with Mrs Chadwick and its amicable finish; and, in case Hannah went through his pockets while he slept, which experience taught him was the way of wives, he put temptation out of her way by concealing the coins beneath the altar cloth in the church. Familiarity with holy things had bred an undesirable freedom in Robert’s views.

The vicar and his wife stood at the vicarage gate and waved farewell to Mr Musgrave’s guests as the car drove past. Mr Musgrave on this occasion accompanied the ladies, speeding, as Mrs Errol remarked, the departure, if he had not obeyed strictly the prescribed rules of hospitality by welcoming the coming guest.

“Well, that’s over,” she said, as the car turned the bend and disappeared from sight. She tucked her hand within her husband’s arm, and walked with him a few yards down the road. “I shall be glad when they are settled at the Hall. It will make things gayer.”

“It will certainly do that,” he agreed. “Gaiety and Mrs Chadwick are synonymous terms.”

“There is no especial virtue in gravity,” Mrs Errol returned.

“There is not,” he answered readily. “I prefer a cheerful countenance myself.”

The vicar’s road that morning taking him past Robert’s cottage, he looked in to inquire for Mrs Robert, who had been much troubled of late with mysterious pains which attacked equally mysterious parts of her anatomy. To listen to Hannah’s diagnosis of her complaints was to wonder how anyone who suffered so distressingly could continue to live, and to remain on the whole fairly active. The vicar, being accustomed to this exaggerated description of the minor ills of the flesh, was able to be sympathetic, and not unduly pessimistic in regard to the patient’s ultimate recovery. But this morning Hannah, having received a letter from her son, was less concerned with her ailments than with the epistle of Robert the younger, who, after two pages devoted to personal and intimate matters, had sent a filial exhortation to his father, in which he recommended for the latter’s careful study the sixteenth verse of the sixteenth chapter according to Saint Mark.

Robert the elder had insisted upon Hannah hunting up that particular verse in the Bible which stood in the front window, where the vicar’s eye, and the eye of the district visitor, could not fail to light upon it. The vicar’s eye had become so familiarised with this object, which looked as though it had never been displaced since first it had been put there, that he had formed a very fair estimate of its accepted value in the household. Mr Errol held no illusions concerning the piety of Robert and his wife.

Hannah, nothing loth, had found the text, and read it aloud to Robert, whose wrathful disgust had caused her quite pleasantly to forget her pains for the time. There stood the words in relentless black and white: “He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.”

Hannah performed the supererogatory task of reading the text aloud to the vicar, who endeavoured while he listened to conceal the smile that found its way to his lips.

“And what has Robert to say to that?” he asked.

Robert had had a good deal to say, but his wife did not feel it necessary to quote him verbatim.

“Robert’s mad,” she answered. “He says he’ll learn ’im. But Bob’s a good boy, sir, and terrible clever.”

“He certainly possesses a strong sense of responsibility,” the vicar allowed.

When later Mr Errol saw Robert, he was reminded of young Robert’s message by the dour look on his old sexton’s face. His expression of wrathful indignation did not convey the suggestion that the seed of his son’s counsel had fallen upon fruitful ground. Robert not only looked upset, he was most unusually taciturn. When he heard that the vicar had been to his cottage that morning he merely grunted. The grunt was expressive of many emotions, the most eloquent of which was unspeakable disgust. At the same time the consciousness of certain coins concealed beneath the altar cloth in the church caused Robert to lower his gaze before his vicar’s eyes.

“So Hannah has heard from Bob,” the vicar observed pleasantly. “Bob seems to fear you are in considerable danger, Robert.”

“’E’ll be in considerable danger if ’e comes ’ome before I’ve ’ad time to cool,” answered Robert grimly. He eyed his horny hand and the wrist muscles, developed like taut leather through long usage with the spade, and smiled darkly. “Reckon I didn’ let in to en enough when ’e were a youngster,” he remarked regretfully. “I only wish ’e were young enough for me to start in again. But I’m more’n ’is match now. Learn ’is father, will ’e? Us’ll see. Thinks ’e knows a sight more’n I do, because ’e’s got a few textes in ’is ’ead. ’Tis about all ’e ’as got there. Proud, ’e is, because ’e reads ’is Bible, which ’e ’lows other folk don’t. Neither they does; but no more didn’t ’e before ’e took up wi’ preaching.”

“Oh, come, Robert,” remonstrated the vicar, smiling. “Plenty of people read their Bibles, even in Moresby.”

“Plenty of people ’as Bibles,” Robert replied darkly. “Keeps ’em for show, they do. I knows. Folks don’t read their Bibles nowadays.”

Robert spoke of the Bible as though it were a relic of prehistoric times which, being a respectable relic, and one the possession of which brought the owner occasional benefits from those in spiritual authority, was therefore worthy of a place even in the front window; but as a book for practical use, the idea was simply a pose.

“Indeed,” the vicar insisted, “I know one or two in the parish who read their Bibles consistently. I have gone in at times and found them reading it.”

Robert eyed the speaker with a gleam in his eyes that suggested affectionate patronage, and a half-contemptuous commiseration for such blind credulity.

“They seed you coming, sir,” he said, with a shake of the head at the depths to which human duplicity will go.

The vicar gazed seriously into the quaint, sincere face of his sexton.

“Don’t you ever read your Bible, Robert?” he asked gravely.

“No, sir. Never ’ear aught of it ’cept wot you reads out in church,” Robert replied with disconcerting candour.

The Rev. Walter Errol turned away abruptly to conceal from the observant eyes regarding him whatever emotion moved him at the outspoken sincerity of this man, who had worked under him for many years in the service of the church. An honest heart is a worthy possession, and truth, no matter what laxity it reveals, is preferable to deceit.

Chapter Nine.

The weeks came and passed, and the work at the Hall continued with unabated energy. Early in November everything was in readiness for the occupation of the new tenants; and with the departure of the workmen the servants arrived at the Hall, and were speedily followed by Mr and Mrs Chadwick and the pekinese.

John Musgrave, with punctilious politeness, paid his call within the week, and was admitted and ushered into the drawing-room by a responsible-looking young woman in a neat uniform, who was, Mr Musgrave supposed, Mrs Chadwick’s butler.

Mrs Chadwick, beautifully gowned, rose at his entry to receive him; a very gracious hostess, having discarded her air of bantering satire, which had so often incensed Mr Musgrave, for the easy cordiality of the woman of the world, bent on being agreeable in her own home; bent, too, on maintaining an attitude of sympathetic patience towards the idiosyncrasies of other people. John Musgrave considered her for the first time without reservation a very charming woman. Mr Chadwick, who had a greater right than anyone else to set himself up as an authority on this subject, had never considered her anything else.

Mr Chadwick was present on the occasion of John Musgrave’s call. He was a big man of indolent appearance, who preferred rather to listen than to talk, but who, when he offered an opinion, commanded naturally the respectful attention of his hearers. One felt that the man possessed a mind of his own. Although most people pride themselves on this possession, it is not given to every one to secure its recognition by others. It is usually the case that the people who insist most upon this recognition are the people who do not receive it. John Musgrave, although he had met Mr Chadwick before, had very little knowledge of the man. It surprised him now to discover in him a man he could like and feel at home with. He had been prepared for something quite different. It had even occurred to him that no man of any intelligence could take second place and allow his wife to usurp his privileges as head of the house; but when he talked with Mr Chadwick he found it necessary to modify his views to the extent of admitting that in exceptional circumstances a clever man might do this without the sacrifice of his dignity. Will Chadwick would have solved the question, had Mr Musgrave put it to him, by explaining that he regarded the individual, irrespective of sex, as being under the obligation of filling the place he or she is most fitted to fill. It was not a matter of privilege, in his opinion, but of capacity; and he never bothered about sex problems. His wife and he were companions and not rivals in their domestic relations.

When Mr Musgrave left—and he was less conventional in timing his departure than he had been in the selection of the hour and date of his call—he carried with him a very pleasant picture of the perfectly organised and harmonious home of cultured and agreeable people. There was a good deal, after all, to be said in favour of English home-life. It was regrettable that home-life was going out of fashion.

As he walked down the broad gravelled drive Mr Musgrave pondered deeply over these matters. He glanced about him upon the beautiful wooded lands surrounding the Hall, and thought how many old English homes of equal dignity were passing into the hands of wealthy strangers because their owners preferred to live in moderate comfort abroad to clinging to their birthright and all it symbolised in defiance of a meagre purse. The privilege conferred by birth, and the dignity of ancient things, were fetishes with Mr Musgrave, to whom poverty in a good old English home would have been preferable to the easy freedom of continental life. This was one of John Musgrave’s many old-fashioned ideas; and old-fashioned ideas are occasionally worthy to stand beside and sometimes even in advance of the modern trend of thought.

While thinking of these things Mr Musgrave was suddenly brought face to face with something so essentially modern that, prepared as he was for surprises in Mrs Chadwick’s household, he was nevertheless taken completely aback. The first intimation of this extreme modernity rushed upon him disconcertingly, after the manner of a noisy herald preparing the way for some one of importance, in the shape of a very ugly and extraordinarily fierce-looking bull-dog. The bull-dog sprang out upon him from behind a wall and growled ferociously, showing his teeth, which is the custom of the well-bred bull, who cannot conceal them, as Mr Musgrave knew. Mr Musgrave, who disliked dogs, was nevertheless not so utterly foolish as to raise his stick, or otherwise show the alarm he felt; but he was very greatly relieved when a sharp, clear whistle called the bull-dog off and assured him that some one, who seemingly had authority, was at hand for his protection. Then it was that, looking up to trace the whistle to its source, he was confronted with the most astonishing sight he had ever beheld.

Against the wall a long ladder leaned, and standing at the top of the ladder doing something apparently to a climbing rose-bush—or, to be exact, not doing anything to the climbing rose-bush at that moment, but looking down at himself—was a young woman. For a second John Musgrave thought it was a boy; during the next second it dawned upon his startled intelligence that this was no boy, but an exceedingly well-grown young woman—a young woman in male attire; that is to say, while the upper part of her was clothed in quite feminine fashion, the lower half—John Musgrave blushed as he grasped the horrible reality—was garbed in a man’s overalls, a serviceable pair of loose-fitting blue trousers, buckled in at the waist with a workmanlike belt, in which was thrust pruning-knife, hammer, and other things necessary to a gardener at the top of a long ladder with no mate at the foot.

“It is all right; he is quite gentle,” the girl called down the ladder reassuringly to the astonished, upturned face of Mr Musgrave.

She was, Mr Musgrave could not fail to observe, a very pretty girl, and she looked unquestionably well in the immodest get-up. Her hair, which was uncovered, was brown, and broke into curls at her temples; and a pair of smiling, darkly grey eyes gazed down at him amiably, with serene indifference to her embarrassing attire. Mr Musgrave imagined this male attire must be even more embarrassing to its wearer than it was to him to behold, in which he was quite mistaken. The girl was beautifully unconscious of anything in her appearance to attract comment. She wore trousers for use; and the serviceability of a thing explains and justifies its existence.

Since the person who addressed him was a woman, natural instinct suggested to Mr Musgrave the raising of his hat; but the sight of those objectionable overalls decided him that the courtesy was uncalled for; then, meeting the grey eyes fully, natural instinct prevailed with him.

The top of a ladder is not a comfortable place for social amenities, and the young person in the overalls had a long nail between her lips, which she had removed in order to call out her reassurance and had since replaced; she inclined her head nevertheless.

“That Moresby,” murmured the owner of the grey eyes, as they followed Mr Musgrave’s retreat. “Moresby does not like two-legged females; it prefers the skirt, and cherishes the fond delusion that the feet are attached quite decorously somewhere to the hem.”

Then she returned to her work, and dismissed Mr Musgrave from her thoughts. The head gardener at the Hall had something else to do besides occupying her mind with idle speculations.

Mr Musgrave passed out through the lodge gates feeling inexpressibly shocked. He knew, because she herself had told him when unfolding some of her schemes, that it was Mrs Chadwick’s practice to employ female labour whenever possible. In that respect, although it was unusual—for which reason alone it did not appeal to him as desirable—she was, he allowed, experimenting in a perfectly legitimate manner; but he could not see the necessity for the substitution of male attire. Because a young woman was employed in an unwomanly capacity it was no argument that she should further unsex herself by encroaching on the right of man to this very proper assertion of being, as the young woman would have expressed it, a biped. But Mr Musgrave in his very natural prejudice overlooked two essential points: that clothes in the first instance are worn for decency and comfort; and that the fashion of them has been decided with regard to utility and convenience, rather than the important question of sex. Plainly a skirt is neither useful nor convenient for climbing ladders in; it is also highly dangerous. Mr Musgrave might have argued: why climb ladders? To which the grey-eyed girl would have replied: because thereby she could earn a living in a perfectly honest and agreeable manner by following the occupation which most interested her, and in which she was undoubtedly skilled. Also the climbing of ladders is quite as simple to many women as it is to the average man. It is a matter of balance. Some people enjoy climbing, just as others prefer going down-hill, and the more equable natures, like Mr Musgrave, have a predilection for a flat road.

But—Mr Musgrave blushed again as he recalled a mental picture of the girl in the overalls—she was such a pretty girl. She looked the kind of girl one places instinctively in a refined home, engaged in the ladylike occupation of painting flowers on satin, or working at plain sewing for the poor. Mr Musgrave’s idea of a suitable setting would not have raised a pang of regret in the contented breast of the head gardener. She would not have vacated her position at the top of the ladder for the most elegant drawing-room, nor have relinquished her pruning-scissors in favour of the daintiest satin-work in the world. She, like Mr Chadwick, believed in the individual doing what she was best fitted to do. And gardening was her “job.”

It is a noteworthy fact that had the head gardener been plain and middle-aged her unsuitable occupation and unseemly attire would not have worried John Musgrave to the extent that it did. He would have dismissed the matter from his thoughts as simply objectionable, and therefore not to be dwelt on; but the youth of this girl and the beauty of her aroused his sympathies. The clear grey eyes were responsible for this. Chivalry in the male breast, even when that, breast belongs to a middle-aged bachelor, is an emotion which, contrary to all right principles, responds most readily to the curve of young lips and the call to laughter from bright eyes.

Chapter Ten.

The residents of Moresby—by which is usually understood not the bulk of the community, but that select portion which gathers in the drawing-rooms and about the tables of its social equals—were moved to a mild and almost pained surprise at being hospitably bidden to dine at the Hall within a month of the Chadwicks’ arrival. This was, Moresby recognised with chill ingratitude, a grave breach of social etiquette. Plainly it was the duty of Moresby to show hospitality to the new-comers and then accept in return whatever the Hall saw fit to offer in acknowledgment of its welcome.

But Mrs Chadwick, who needed no precedent in anything she wished to do, was not prepared to wait on Moresby hospitality, which, she rightly guessed, would be slow in asserting itself. She wanted to gather her new neighbours together, and she did not mind in the least whether or no they invited her back to their houses. As soon, therefore, as they had called and she had returned the calls, she asked them to dine; and despite the general feeling of perturbed wonder which this unexpected invitation occasioned, no one—their numbers were but four, because Moresby had its limitations—declined.

Thus it came about that on a certain cold December night John Musgrave foregathered with his neighbours and one or two people from Rushleigh in the great drawing-room at the Hall, where, as a young man in the old squire’s time, he had been wont to attend functions of a similar nature, more formal and dull perhaps, as suited the day and prestige of the entertainer, but certainly not more splendid nor more kindly in tone.

It was so long since John Musgrave had taken part in any entertainment other than an informal supper at the vicarage or an equally quiet home-dinner, that he felt rather bewildered as he looked about him on this assemblage of, for the greater part, familiar faces rendered unfamiliar by reason of an unwonted magnificence of attire. Even little Mrs Errol was gowned with unusual elegance. As Mr Musgrave’s eyes fell upon her he was conscious for the first time that she was a very pretty woman. He had not thought of her as pretty before; he had merely considered her womanly. It was possible, he realised, to be womanly and pretty at the same time. Her dress was eminently becoming.

Miss Simpson wore a narrow-shouldered, aesthetic garment, so modestly cut that only the scraggy column of her throat was visible above its lavender folds. Mr Musgrave, whose eyes were attracted towards her by the magnetic force of her gaze, which was riveted on him from the moment of his entry, compared her to her disadvantage with the vicar’s modish little wife, whose extravagance in the matter of her new dress was spoiling one-half of her satisfaction in the knowledge that she compared favourably with the other guests.

Of the rest of the ladies present only one was unknown to Mr Musgrave. His eyes fell upon her as he left his hostess’s side, passed over her face without recognition, and then, as though suddenly reminded of having seen it somewhere amid other surroundings, planted, indeed, in an altogether different setting, they wandered back uncertainly and rested with a puzzled scrutiny on the delicate profile that was half turned from him. Something in the rebellious wave of the brown hair, something in the buoyant grace of the girl’s carriage, appeared vaguely familiar. And then suddenly the stranger turned and faced him squarely, and a pair of darkly grey eyes looked for a second into his and betrayed a flash of recognition. The faintest of smiles lit their grey depths. She was talking to the vicar, and she turned to him and said something in a low voice, as a result of which the vicar summoned Mr Musgrave to his side and presented him, and—quite unnecessarily, John Musgrave thought—left him alone with this exceedingly womanly looking, unwomanly young person.

As Mr Musgrave beheld her now, suitably attired in an exceedingly elegant yet simple white dinner dress, he found it difficult to associate this dainty person with the dreadful vision in blue overalls standing at the top of a long ladder and whistling to the bull-dog. He shuddered when he recalled that sight. How could any refined girl be guilty of such immodest conduct?

But the person in the overalls had done him a service. He felt that it would be only courtesy to acknowledge it. But did not courtesy demand rather that he should ignore that painful episode? It was possible that the girl would be displeased to be reminded of that occasion. Mr Musgrave felt so embarrassed, and was so little successful in concealing this emotion, that the girl, becoming conscious of it, imagined that he was shy. She promptly “started in,” as she would have phrased it, to set him at his ease.

“I’m quite in love with Moresby,” she said brightly. “It’s the prettiest spot I’ve happened upon so far. These old places which have fallen asleep are restful. I was just asking Mr Errol when you arrived to whom that beautiful garden belonged, with the old gabled house standing back from the road, and he replied, ‘Here’s the owner.’ When I looked round and saw you I remembered your face. Diogenes introduced us informally, if you recall the afternoon you called here. He is a dreadfully pushing person, Diogenes; but he’s a dear when you know him.”

“I daresay,” Mr Musgrave answered, correctly surmising that Diogenes was the bull-dog. “But I dislike dogs.”

“I should never have thought that,” replied the girl, looking faintly surprised; “because Diogenes likes you. He never speaks to people he doesn’t like; and dogs as a rule know at once when people are not sympathetic. He quite gushed about you after you had gone. I won’t tell him he has made a mistake, it might hurt his feelings. And after all you are possibly mistaken yourself. You’d love dogs, I expect, if you once allowed yourself to take an interest in them. They are like children; one has to get accustomed to them.”

“On the occasion you refer to,” said Mr Musgrave tactfully, “I was very obliged to you for coming to my assistance. I confess to having felt distinctly nervous of Diogenes.”

“Most people are,” she said. “He looks so ferocious, and he’s noisy. But that was only good-tempered teasing. He always helps me when I am gardening, and he enjoys thinking he is keeping intruders off. You must come and see the gardens some day. Mr Errol tells me you are dreadfully learned about flowers.”

“I am interested in flowers,” John Musgrave allowed modestly.

“So am I—enormously. I just love having this big place to experiment with. And my aunt is such a dear; she gives me a free hand.” She laughed delightfully, showing a set of very pretty teeth. “A free hand constitutes also unlimited funds, and that is such a help in the making of a beautiful garden.”

“I should have thought,” Mr Musgrave said, “that the making of a garden was unnecessary where a garden already existed. I understood the grounds were always kept up.”

“They have been kept from neglect,” she answered. “But there is a lot to be done. We have got to bring it all up to date.”

“Oh?” he said, and repressed a shudder. He had never liked that expression; since his acquaintance with Mrs Chadwick he had grown to actively dislike it. “I am old-fashioned, I suppose,” he added. “I prefer things left as they are. The associations which cling about familiar things are more beautiful, in my opinion, than change. No outlay of money can improve an old-world garden.”

“The introduction of a quantity of patent manure into the ground helps considerably in its productiveness,” she answered practically. “Wait till the summer comes. When you see the glory of bloom then you’ll admit the utility of money. I should like some time to come and see your garden. Do you work in it yourself?”

“I!” Mr Musgrave appeared taken aback at the suggestion that he should labour among his borders, which were noted in Moresby for their beauty. “I supervise the man, of course,” he said.

“Oh!” she returned in a tone of commiseration for the pleasure that he missed. “Supervising is tame. When one feels the soil with one’s hands one learns what it means to love it, and every little root one buries in the mould becomes as a dear child. You are only scientifically interested in flowers, I suspect. I’ve learnt the science of them, too; but I am trying to forget all that and acquire practical knowledge. Imagine a mother bringing up her child scientifically! I know some people consider it a wise plan, but every child, like every plant, has its little peculiarities, and needs to be made a separate study.”

“You are very young,” Mr Musgrave remarked, looking into the clear eyes with a shade of disapproval in his own, “to entertain views on these subjects.”

To his surprise she laughed.

“I’m twenty-eight,” she answered frankly. “If one hasn’t any views at that age it is safe to predict one will never have any. At twenty-eight lots of women are engaged in experimenting practically in the upbringing of children. I have nephews and nieces ranging up to ten.”

Mr Musgrave was by now firmly convinced that he did not like this young person. He was quite sure that working in overalls was not good for the mind. And yet, when he came to reflect upon what she had said later, he failed to discover what there had been to object to so strongly in her talk. But he had taken a strong objection to the tone of her conversation. Could it be that he was not merely old-fashioned, but slightly priggish? Mr Musgrave did not like to think of himself as a prig. It is a term which Englishmen affect to despise. Nevertheless there are a few prigs in the world. Mr Musgrave was not a prig, but he came perilously near to being one at times.

A move in the direction of the dining-room put an end to their talk. Mr Musgrave was paired off with his legitimate dinner partner, a Rushleigh lady, the importance of whose social position as a member of one of the oldest families in the neighbourhood rendered it seemingly unnecessary for her to support the effort of being even ordinarily conversational. John Musgrave knew her intimately, and was therefore not unduly depressed by her long silences and her chilly acceptance of his stereotyped phrases in an attempt to sustain a courteous soliloquy during the courses.

Farther down, on the opposite side of the table, the grey-eyed girl was chatting animatedly with a young medical man, also from Rushleigh, who appeared, John Musgrave observed with a sense of feeling suddenly bored and out of tune with his surroundings, to be enjoying himself hugely. Mr Musgrave had always understood that young people did not enjoy dinner-parties; as a young man he had found them extraordinarily dull. But this young man was apparently enjoying both the food and the company. The grey-eyed girl was not, however, discussing with him patent manures, or other horticultural matters. At the moment when John Musgrave observed them they were engaged in a flippant conversation which the young man characterised as psychological, but which John Musgrave would not have dignified by such a term. It was the kind of agreeable nonsense which is pleasing only to youth.

The young man considered the grey-eyed girl ripping. The grey-eyed girl—who was called Peggy Annersley—referred to him in her thoughts as a sport. Mr Musgrave would not have approved of either expression. The vocabulary of youth is uncouth.

In the drawing-room, following the long dinner, there was a little music, under cover of which many of the guests took refuge in silence, relieved that the necessity to make conversation was temporarily relaxed. The business of enjoying one’s self is a strenuous matter.

Mr Musgrave, moved by a stern sense of duty and the conviction of what was correct, went from one group of acquaintances to another and exchanged civilities with all. Peggy watched his conscientious progress through the room with mischievous, comprehending eyes. He was the quaintest thing in Moresby, she reflected, where everything was quaint.

Later, when the guests had departed, in response to a question put by Mrs Chadwick in reference to him, she stated that he seemed quite a nice old thing. Mrs Chadwick surveyed her niece thoughtfully, and then glanced at her own reflection in a mirror.

“Should you describe me as old?” she asked.

“You!” the girl laughed scoffingly. “You dear! What a question?”

“I am thirty-nine,” Mrs Chadwick said. “And John Musgrave is forty.”

The girl looked unimpressed.

“I daresay. But no one would consider John’s years. He is fossilised,” she said.

Chapter Eleven.

Miss Peggy Annersley was a niece of Mr Chadwick, one of a family of four girls whom Fate had deprived of their mother in early childhood, and, as though repenting the evil turn she had wrought them, had remedied the ill as far as she was able by subsequently removing their father also from a world in which, though undoubtedly ornamental, he was not of the slightest use. Having freed them thus far from the only obstacle in the path of any possible success which might fall to their lot, she threw them with light-hearted irresponsibility and an air of having finished with them, if not finally, at least for the time being, into the care of the wealthy uncle who, being childless, was naturally the person best fitted to undertake the charge of four well-grown, unruly, under-educated girls. Mr Chadwick sent them forthwith to a good boarding-school, and, like Fate, having disposed of them temporarily, dismissed them from his thoughts. But Mr Chadwick was possessed of a wife, and that wife was possessed of ideas regarding the race in general and the feminine half of it in particular; she therefore shouldered his neglected responsibilities and made the education of those four girls her special study.

Mr Chadwick’s idea had been to educate them decently, as he expressed it, and give them a small but sufficient income on which to live independently, and leave them to worry out the problem of life for themselves. Mrs Chadwick objected to this plan on the plea that it was charity, and charity, save in exceptional circumstances, was humiliating to the individual and unsatisfactory, inasmuch as it retarded the mental and moral growth, and disorganised the social scheme.

Therefore each girl was educated as a boy might be, with a knowledge that she must earn her livelihood and had therefore better develop any talent and specialise in the choice of a profession.

The arrangement had worked well. The eldest girl, who, like her father, was ornamental rather than useful, had specialised matrimonially and left the schoolroom for a home of her own, and was very well satisfied with her lot. The second girl had become a medical student; and, showing marked ability in the profession she had chosen, took her M.D. and subsequently practised successfully as a doctor in a busy Midland town. The third girl, who was Peggy, had taken up gardening with equal aptitude, and was employed by her aunt for two reasons: the first being that Mrs Chadwick preferred a woman gardener; the second and all-important reason being that she was very fond of Peggy and wished to keep her with her. The fourth girl was an architect, and, being still quite young, was as yet on the lowest rung of the ladder. She was, however, keen, and Mrs Chadwick hoped that she would become an ornament to her profession in time.

Save for Peggy and the eldest girl, who was a beauty, looks were not the chief asset of the family, so that for the doctor and the young architect it was more expedient that they should do well in the work they had taken up.

Mrs Chadwick was on the whole very satisfied with the result of her effort on their behalf. Next to having girls of her own, four nieces with an average share of brains provided admirable material for the development of her feminist schemes. It afforded her immense gratification to watch their progress, and behold, instead of four helpless girls keeping house in bored inactivity on other people’s money, four—or rather three—very capable young persons equal to fighting their own way through life, and privileged to enjoy the bread of independence. If any girl imagines there is a better lot in life she is mistaken. No occupation unfits a woman for the rôle of wife and mother; it gives her rather a greater right to bring children into the world, when she is able to support them if necessary. Mr Musgrave would not have shared this opinion; but Musgravian ideas fill almshouses and orphanages and are responsible for a great deal of genteel and quite needless poverty. That one half—and that the larger half—of the race should depend for its existence on the other half is absurd.

Peggy Annersley was a young woman of very independent spirit. Had she wished, she might have made her occupation as gardener at the Hall a sinecure. She could have given her orders to those under her and have enjoyed her leisure in any way that appeared agreeable to herself. Mrs Chadwick imposed no conditions or restraints. But Peggy drew a handsome wage, and she liked to fed when she received her monthly cheque that she had earned it; therefore she donned overalls and spoilt her hands, or, as she would have expressed it, hardened them, in the conscientious fulfilment of her duties. She put in her eight hours a day, except in the winter when work was slack, and insisted upon her half-day off during the week. There was only one matter in which she enjoyed any advantage over the rest—she was not liable to dismissal.

On her half-day off Peggy usually went for a walk accompanied by Diogenes. She resolutely refused to give up these half-days to paying calls with her aunt or helping her to entertain visitors. If she were imperatively needed for social duties these had to be worked in in her employers’ time. Peggy was a veritable Trades Union in herself, and refused absolutely to sacrifice her off-time to any object that did not conform with her ideas of pleasurable relaxation.

Thus it fell out that when the guests who had participated in the Chadwicks’ hospitality were, with rigid observance of rule, punctiliously performing their duty in the matter of an after-dinner call, Miss Annersley, in defiance of her aunt’s remonstrance, insisted on going off as usual with the faithful Diogenes. Mrs Chadwick was vexed. Mr Chadwick had that morning met John Musgrave in the village, and had returned with the news that Mr Musgrave had mentioned that it was his purpose to call that same afternoon. Mrs Chadwick for some inexplicable reason desired Peggy’s support on this occasion, and appeared disproportionately annoyed when Peggy departed on her walk and left her aunt to receive Mr Musgrave alone. Mr Chadwick was present, certainly, but the presence of Mr Chadwick could not further her amiable plans for the modernising of John Musgrave.

It was a wild, bright day with a touch of frost in the air, and as she walked briskly across the fields the sun and the wind and the cold air brought a glorious colour into Peggy’s cheeks and lent a sparkle to her eyes. It was regrettable that there was no one there to note these things except Diogenes and a few cows. Peggy was not alarmed of cows; but Diogenes, who was in a boisterous mood, caused her considerable anxiety through displaying a desire to chase these unoffending animals, resenting which, they acted in a manner unseemly in their breed. In one field there were bulls. They were young bulls, and harmless; but Diogenes excited them, and when they began to chase Diogenes he feigned nervousness and sought shelter behind his mistress’s skirts, Peggy, feeling nervous without feigning it, took refuge in the hedge. Then it was that she became aware of a small bearded man, who, having just climbed the stile, walked fearlessly among the herd, which made way before him as before the progress of some royal personage and allowed him to pass unharmed. The small bearded man stopped when he was abreast of Peggy, and stared up at her where she crouched in the hedge with critical, contemptuous eyes.

“Do you like milk?” he asked unexpectedly.

“Yes,” Peggy answered, puzzled to understand why this person, whom she now recognised for the sexton, if he wished to address her should open civilities with such an unusual remark; why, too, he should seem upset with her reply. He looked almost angry.

“Do you like beef?” he proceeded, putting her through this catechism as though he were playing a serious kind of new game.

“Yes,” Peggy repeated with increasing wonder.

The little man looked really fierce now. She was relieved to have Diogenes at hand; this person was more terrifying than the bulls.

“Then wot are you afeard of? Get down out of thicky hedge. They won’t ’urt ’ee.”

Peggy felt indignant; the little man was quite unnecessarily rude.

“I do not care to watch milk churning itself in the open,” she retorted; “and I prefer beef cooked.”

Robert appeared for the moment at a loss for a suitable response. He looked at her sourly, and from her to the dog.

“You shouldn’ take that there toy terrier across the fields, if you’m afeard o’ cattle,” he remarked. “’E’s more mischeevous than wot they be. Get down out o’ thicky ’edge, I tell ’ee. I’ll see ’ee across.”

“Why didn’t you say that in the beginning?” Peggy said, flashing a smile at him and slipping nimbly down from her position of doubtful security. “That’s exactly what I was wishing you would do.”

“I seen a woman orched once,” Robert was beginning conversationally, as they walked along together, when Peggy interrupted him to inquire what “orched” meant.

“Why, bein’ tossed, o’ course,” Robert answered, amazed at her ignorance. “She died, too—died o’ fright, I reckon; ’er warn’t ’urt much. It was a cow done it. But ’twas more by way o’ play than temper. Females is easy scared.”

“Yes,” Peggy agreed. “I allow that would scare me. You must be very brave, Mr Robert. I knew you were brave the moment I saw you.”

“Eh?” Robert ventured, a little doubtful as to her entire sincerity. He knew something about females and he had never known them other than deceitful. “Reckon I’m not more easy scared than most.”

Hannah would have laughed could she have heard that boast; he was—and she knew it—scared of her.

“Are you afraid of ghosts?” Peggy asked.

“Ghosts!” Robert’s tone was scornful. “No, I ban’t afeard o’ they. Somethin’ you can put your ’and through don’t signify much. Wot I might be afeard of,” he added, wishful not to appear bragging, “is somethin’ bigger an’ stronger than meself, wot can take holt to your whistle and squeeze it like the plumbers do the gas-pipes of a ’ouse. That might scare me, now.”

His manner conveyed a doubt whether even that experience could effectively arouse his fears. He left it to her imagination to picture him struggling valiantly, undismayed, against gigantic odds.

“Folks say there’s a ghost up at the ’All,” he added.

“I knew it!” the girl exclaimed. “I’ve a feeling in my bones, when I wake in the dark, that there must be a ghost somewhere.”

Robert nodded confirmation.

“Hannah—that’s my missis—she used to live ’ousemaid up at the ’All in old squire’s time. She seen it. Leastways, she says she ’as,” he added in the tone of a man who considers the reliability of the evidence open to question.

“If she says so, of course she must have seen it,” Peggy insisted.

“Well,” Robert answered, “I dunno. Seems to me if Hannah ’ad a seen it, er’d ’ave left; an’ ’er didn’ leave, not till I married ’er. But ’er was always tellin’ up about thicky ole ghost, though ’er never could describe it. If I’d seen a ghost I’d know wot ’e looked like. Misty, ’er used to say—kind o’ misty like, an’ big. I’ve seed misty kind o’ things meself when I’ve ’ad a drop; but Hannah’s teetotal.”

Peggy eyed him contemplatively.

“When you are digging graves, Mr Robert, do you never see a ghost?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Nothin’ more’n a few ole bones.”

“Ugh?” the girl exclaimed.

“There’s naught to mind in bones,” Robert returned. “They couldn’t put theirselves together again, anyway, because parts of ’em would be missin’. But the first lot I ’eaved up turned my stummick, sure. A man gets used to it.”

Peggy had a feeling that she had had enough of Robert’s society for one day, and, having come to a stile where an inviting lane branched off from the fields, she inquired of him where it led.

“It takes ’ee past the back o’ Mr Musgrave’s house,” he answered.

“Oh,” said Peggy, “then I think I am going that way. Thank you very much for seeing me past the danger.”

She parted from Robert joyfully, and set off with Diogenes down the muddy roadway between its tall green banks.

“We are going to see the back of the fossil’s dwelling; now for adventure number two, Diogenes,” she said.

Chapter Twelve.

Peggy was fond of boasting that adventures usually met her on her walks abroad. It is a peculiar conceit with some people to believe that things happen for them. To the imaginative person the unexpected event befalls, and signifies considerably more than it would signify to the person of a practical mind. The adult of Peggy’s temperament never grows away from the fairyland of make-believe which usually is considered the sole prerogative of childhood. There is a wonderland for grown people, but not many dwell in it. Peggy dwelt in it, which was one reason why she always derived enjoyment from her country rambles with Diogenes.

But on this particular afternoon the adventures which befell Peggy were less agreeable than exciting. The encounter with the bulls had ended comfortably as a result of the opportune appearance of a knight-errant in the form of Robert; the second adventure had a less agreeable termination, possibly because no knight-errant arrived upon the scene, save in a laggard fashion which was in the nature of an anti-climax. Diogenes was directly responsible in both instances for everything which occurred. It was unusual for Diogenes to make himself a nuisance; possibly the Moresby air was too exhilarating for him.

When Peggy reached the end of the lane and emerged upon Mr Musgrave’s back entrance she paused and looked about her, less from a sense of curiosity than a sudden realisation that the lane was a cul-de-sac, and unless she could brace herself to make the return journey by the way she had come, and face again the dangers from which Robert had rescued her, only to leave her basely in the lurch outside the back gate of the dwelling-house of a respectable, fossilised bachelor, she would be forced to make use of the tradesmen’s entrance—the notice was painted neatly on the gate—and pass through Mr Musgrave’s garden.

“Why not?” said Peggy to herself. “I wanted to see his garden. I told him so; and he didn’t respond as a gentleman should. Therefore I will commit a trespass.”

She would, have committed anything rather than return by the fields with Diogenes, who, for the first time within her knowledge, had defied her authoritative whistle. Diogenes, having created a precedent by this act of defiance, proceeded to follow it, which is what a precedent exists for. When Peggy, not without the feeling which a burglar must have when he forces his first lock, pushed open the tradesmen’s entrance and took a furtive look inside to assure herself no one was on the watch to prevent her, Diogenes got his inquisitive snub nose between the crack, and using his broad shoulders, forced the gate a little wider and entered with a bound.

A rush, a scream, a frantic barking and growling followed, and Peggy, pursuing in hot haste and whistling as authoritatively as her panting breath permitted, arrived at the back door of Mr Musgrave’s house, and, hearing a distressing pandemonium within, did not pause to consider the conventions, but dashed through the scullery and into the kitchen. There such a scene met her eyes as would have moved her to laughter had she not been too frightened to realise the comic element in the domestic drama she beheld. Diogenes held the floor—he was too unwieldy an animal to get above it; but he had cleared every one else off it and remained master of the situation, showing his teeth, and growling hideously in huge enjoyment of the game. The respectable Eliza stood on the table screaming; Martha, the corpulent, was mounted on a chair. Since she was not screaming, but was merely murmuring, “Good doggie, good doggie?” in a soothing voice, Diogenes was not concerned with her, but gave his whole attention to the subduing of Eliza.

The cause of the first mad rush, Mr Musgrave’s sedate tabby, had sprung upon the highest shelf on the dresser, having dislodged in her ascent more of Mr Musgrave’s valuable dinner-service than would have seemed necessary in attaining to her present elevation. The floor was strewn with broken china, and the breaker, with arched back and distended tail, looked down upon Diogenes barking amid the débris with the most malignant glare that Peggy had ever beheld in the eyes of a cat.

Peggy swooped down upon Diogenes, and, seizing him by the collar, belaboured him soundly with the dog-whip, which, until the present occasion, she had carried merely from force of habit, as one carries an umbrella in England at certain seasons even when one does not expect it to rain. Diogenes, who had recognised the dog-whip only as the symbol of an invitation to go walking, was so astonished when he realised that this hitherto agreeable-looking object could hurt that he ceased his joyous barking and relapsed into a sulky mood, which changed to a whimpering protest when he discovered that Peggy did not tire as readily as he did of this abominable misuse of the instrument she wielded. Diogenes had thought it was a game; and the game was having a most discouraging ending.

Mingled with Diogenes’ protests, drowning them, indeed, Eliza’s noisy wailing, the hissing of the cat, and the soothing reiteration of Martha’s “Good doggie!” penetrating Peggy’s hearing, took the power out of her arm. She did not laugh, although she experienced an hysterical desire to both laugh and cry, but she left off thrashing Diogenes and fastened the lead to his collar, to Eliza’s intense relief, and then looked up.

“I am so sorry,” she said, addressing herself to Martha, since Martha alone showed sufficient control to heed her apology. “I’ve never known him do such a thing before. But he wouldn’t hurt anyone—not even the cat. He is perfectly gentle.”

He might have been; he was, on the whole; but appearances seemed rather to belie the assertion.

Martha scrambled down from the chair and readjusted her cap, which was drooping coquettishly over one ear.

“Lor’!” she said. “What a fright it give me; it most a turned me inside out.”

Diogenes, thoroughly subdued, wagged a tentative tail at her. He rather liked Martha. But when Eliza, still weeping, sat down on the table and, with an unconscious display of thin legs, descended on the far side, he showed a tendency to become restive, and strained at the unaccustomed leash. Peggy cuffed him vigorously, whereupon he subsided and affected to sulk again.

“However could that animal ’ave got in?” exclaimed Martha, at which simple question Peggy felt guilty. She felt more guilty still when Martha added acrimoniously to the weeping Eliza, “That’s your fault, Lizer. You must ’ave left the gate open.”

“No,” said Peggy bravely, conscious of her glowing cheeks, and wishing from the depths of her being that she had faced the bulls rather than trespass on Mr Musgrave’s property; “I opened the gate. I wanted to walk through the garden because of the bulls. And then Diogenes saw the cat and escaped from me.”

Martha looked amazed, only imperfectly understanding this none too lucid explanation; and Eliza, who had been too upset to know whether she had left the gate open or not, discovering that she was not responsible for the mischance, stared resentfully at the intruder.

“This is private property,” she announced in the haughty manner of a person who feels herself by virtue of her residence thereon joint owner of the premises. “You can’t walk through private grounds.”

What Peggy would have replied, or if she would have replied at all, remained indeterminate. At that moment Martha straightened her cap anew and Eliza started to sniff more loudly and Diogenes ventured on a bark as the kitchen door opened and John Musgrave, with gravely astonished face, stood framed in the aperture, gazing upon the scene.

To Peggy’s consternation the displeased glance of the master of the house fell immediately upon the broken china which strewed the floor—he could not possibly overlook it, since it lay almost at his feet—and then lifted and rested accusingly, it seemed to her, upon her blushing face. Her presence in his kitchen was an event which called for some explanation. Peggy proceeded to explain, and to express her regret for the accident. She hoped, despite a desire to punish her, which from his expression she was positive he was experiencing, he would eject her by the front gate instead of the back. It would be horrible if after all these nerve-shattering happenings she would still be obliged to face the bulls.

“Diogenes only chased the cat for fun,” she finished, loyally excusing the delinquent, who by no means deserved to have his conduct defended. “He would not have hurt it really. He’s rather partial to cats.”

“Indeed!” said Mr Musgrave, and stared up at the cat, who glared back at him defiantly from her position of security. The cat was suffered, not as a pet, but because cats in a house were of use in keeping down the mice. “I think,” added Mr Musgrave, “that the cat would feel happier if Diogenes were removed.”

“Please,” pleaded Peggy humbly, “let us go by the front gate. I am really afraid to cross the fields again. Diogenes chases the bulls.”

“’Orrid brute!” muttered Eliza with a sniff so loud that it drew Mr Musgrave’s eyes in her direction.

“You had better,” he observed drily, “clear away this—rubbish.”

He indicated the broken crockery. Then he stood away from the door and looked at Peggy.

“If you will come with me, Miss Annersley, I will take you through the garden. Kindly keep the dog on the lead.”

Peggy preceded him from the kitchen in a chastened mood, feeling very like a small girl about to be reprimanded. She resented Mr Musgrave’s air of elderly superiority. He might have assured her, before the servants at least, that it did not matter, and told her not to distress herself. She had a conviction that he felt it was only proper she should distress herself, for which reason she determined not to be overwhelmingly contrite. It was his cat that had effected the damage; Diogenes had not scrambled over the furniture.

Mr Musgrave led her through a passage and into the hall, which was wide and spacious, and had a comfortable fire glowing on the low hearth. It was a very nice hall. Peggy looked about her with interested curiosity. It was a nice house altogether; and Mr Musgrave, as he paused and looked down at her a little uncertainly, did not appear so forbidding as he had looked in the kitchen. After all, considering the amount of damage she and Diogenes were responsible for between them, he had shown admirable control. Peggy was relenting. She experienced the desire to more adequately express her regret.

“Would you like to—rest a little while?” Mr Musgrave asked.

The question was so unexpected that Peggy wanted to laugh. She realised that courtesy alone dragged the reluctant suggestion from her unwilling host, and was aware that acceptance of the invitation by increasing his embarrassment would aggravate her former offence. Mischief prompted assent; but the new feeling of kindliness towards him overruled the teasing instinct, and to Mr Musgrave’s relief she declined.

“I think,” she said, “you have seen enough of us for one day. When I come again I will leave Diogenes behind.”

She put out a hand and laid it with girlish impulsiveness on his sleeve.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

Mr Musgrave looked down at the small hand as he might have looked at something that had alighted on his sleeve by accident, which could not be brushed off, but must be allowed to remove itself at its own convenience. It was a strong little hand, roughened with labour, and ungloved, because its owner had removed her glove the better to chastise Diogenes; but it was quite a nicely-shaped woman’s hand, and would have been fine and white had it been allowed to become so. Then he looked straight into the upturned face.

“Please don’t think any more about it,” he said, and meeting the grey eyes fully, smiled.

Chapter Thirteen.

When Peggy Annersley parted from John Musgrave at his gate and set off down the road accompanied by the joyous Diogenes, now freed from the lead, Mr Musgrave turned about and slowly retraced his steps along the gravelled path he had traversed at Peggy’s side. His mind, despite the early prejudice which the sight of the young lady immodestly attired had excited, and the later annoyance of her unfortunate trespass, which anyone might well have resented, harboured no unkindly thought. He was even conscious of a faint amusement as he recalled the astonishing picture of her unexpected presence in his kitchen, and his own amazement at finding her there. She stimulated alike his interest and his curiosity. It is impossible to experience interest in another human being and remain altogether indifferent in feeling, particularly when that interest is centred in a member of the opposite sex. John Musgrave was not given to self-analysis, nor did he disturb his mind with problems of this nature. Had it occurred to him that a mild interest in a prepossessing young woman held possibilities of unexpected development he would promptly have banished the captivating Peggy from the place she engaged in his thoughts. At that stage in their acquaintance this would have been quite simple of accomplishment. John Musgrave would have thought so, at least. But the mind is an odd store-room, and many things dwell in it which the owner is powerless to eject—small, persistent, elusive thoughts which hide behind the lumber of inconsequent things.

As Mr Musgrave slowly paced the gravel walk, lost in a not unpleasing reverie, he became suddenly aware of an insignificant object lying in his path, and, stooping to examine this object at closer range, discovered that it was a woman’s glove. Since only one woman had used that path recently, since, too, the glove had assuredly not been there when he had accompanied Peggy to the gate, the inference pointed conclusively to the glove being Peggy’s property.

John Musgrave picked it up, and held it between his fingers. Then he placed it across the palm of one hand and examined it with curiosity, after the manner of a collector who has discovered some new object of interest. It was a small glove, absurdly small it seemed to John Musgrave as it lay across his large palm, and it was obviously new. Had Mr Musgrave been more experienced in the matter of women’s dress he would have realised from the fact of its newness that the owner would make some effort to recover her property, an odd glove being useless, and no woman caring to sacrifice a new pair. But Mr Musgrave did not consider this point. He was for the time absorbed in contemplation of the absurd thing.

Having examined it on the one side, he reversed it on his palm and examined it on the other. Then he took it up, and idly, in abstracted mood, thrust his fingers into it and began pulling it over his hand. The futility of attempting to fit a larger object into a smaller was immediately demonstrated; the kid split obligingly at the seams to accommodate the hand that was never intended to fill it, and John Musgrave, gazing at the mischief he had wrought, beheld his large knuckles bursting through the tear. The new glove was no longer a thing of any value.

At the moment of realising what he had done he became aware of a still more disquieting circumstance: the gate behind him clicked and the sound of rapid footsteps fell upon his ear. Hastily, with a change of colour which suggested a conscience not altogether free from guilt, he proceeded to drag the glove off his hand. But the thing resisted stubbornly, and the girl was almost at his elbow. He desisted from his efforts, and swung round and faced her, concealing his hand awkwardly behind his back. There was nothing in the expression of the demure face that met his gaze to betray that the girl had any suspicion why that right arm of his should be doubled behind his back; but to one familiar with Peggy the guilelessness of her look might have suggested knowledge.

“I’m sorry to trouble you again,” she said softly, “but I have dropped a glove. It’s a new glove, and I don’t wish to lose it. I thought it might be in the garden, perhaps.”

Mr Musgrave hesitated, and was lost. He dissembled. To have admitted in the first instance having found the glove, even though he had to confess to having spoilt it, would have been simple, but he had let the opportunity slip; to own to it now would prove embarrassing. He looked with discomfited eyes along the path.

“I do not see it,” he said.

“No,” replied Peggy, “neither do I. But I thought...”

“Perhaps,” said Mr Musgrave quickly, “you left it in the kitchen. I will tell the servants to look. It shall be returned to you.”

“I had it,” Peggy persisted, “when I was talking with you in the hall.”

“Yes?” he said. “Then—then perhaps it is there. It shall be found.”

A spirit of wickedness entered into Peggy.

“Never mind,” she said brightly. “It serves me right if I have lost it. Don’t trouble to hunt for it, Mr Musgrave. I came back because I thought I might find it near the gate; but plainly it isn’t here. Good-bye again.”

She held out a determined hand. Mr Musgrave was faced with the greatest dilemma he had ever experienced. What was he to do? Courtesy demanded that he should take her hand; to ignore it would be unpardonable. To extend the left hand was equally impossible; to offer the right was to acknowledge his duplicity, and might lead to an altogether wrong conception of his motives. A man when he acts upon impulse is not necessarily guided by any motive. For the fraction of a second he hesitated; then, with perfect gravity, he drew his arm from behind his back, and with the hand still wearing the torn fragments of the lost glove he silently touched her fingers. Peggy’s grey eyes were on his face; they did not fall, he observed, once to his hand. He felt grateful to her. A little tact—and tact is but the dictates of a kindly nature—smoothes over many awkward situations.

He returned with her to the gate and opened it for her, and raised his hat gravely as she passed through, to be greeted with boisterous effusiveness by Diogenes, who had reluctantly waited outside.

“He’s rather a dear, Diogenes,” she said, as she proceeded down the road, a little more soberly now. “He made me feel a little mean female cad.”

John Musgrave, returning along the path, drew off the torn glove and slipped it into his pocket. Another link had been formed in the chain of impressions.

By the time Peggy reached the Hall her self-abasement had evaporated, and her usual good spirits reasserted themselves. She made directly for the drawing-room, where Mrs Chadwick, after a disappointing afternoon, lay limply against the cushions of a sofa, solacing herself with the inevitable cigarette. She looked round at Peggy’s entrance, and was so relieved to see some one bright and young and wholesome that the resentment she was prepared to show vanished—in her welcoming smile. Peggy was one of those fortunate people who disarm wrath by reason of unfailing good temper.

“You are late,” Mrs Chadwick said. “If you want fresh tea you will have to ring for it.”

“I don’t mind it cold,” Peggy returned, attending to her needs at the tea-table and smiling pleasantly to herself the while. “Tired?” she asked, dropping comfortably into a seat, and surveying her aunt inquiringly above the tea-cup in her hand.

“Tired and bored,” Mrs Chadwick answered.

“Been entertaining the aborigines, I suppose?”

“Yes. You might have stayed to help me. These people... Peggy, I consider it is in the nature of a solecism to be so dull; it’s a breach of good taste.”

“They can’t help it,” Peggy said soothingly. “I expect if we had lived all our days in Moresby we should be dull too. It’s stultifying. I am sorry you have had such a slow time. I’ve been enjoying myself—hugely. I’ve had most surprising adventures.”

Mrs Chadwick laughed.

“You generally do,” she answered. “But it puzzles me to think how you contrive adventures in Moresby. Nothing ever happens when I pass beyond the gates. It would cause me a shock if it did.”

“It caused me several shocks,” Peggy replied, looking amused. “I experience them again when I review the afternoon’s doings. You’d never guess where I’ve been.”

“Then I won’t try to. Tell me. If you give me a shock it may shake off the ennui I am suffering. You have done something audacious, I suppose.”

Peggy ceased munching her cake and tried to look serious, but failed. Two tantalising dimples played at the corners of her mouth and her eyes shone wickedly.

“A little audacious, perhaps,” she allowed. “In the first place, I’ve been walking out with the sexton. He was quite interesting and agreeable until he began to discuss corpses. That made me feel uncomfortable; so I left him and went to call on Mr Musgrave.”

“What!” exclaimed Mrs Chadwick.

“It is all right,” Peggy proceeded reassuringly. “Nobody saw me. I slipped in through the tradesmen’s entrance and interviewed him in the kitchen chaperoned by the cook and a sour-faced parlourmaid. Having satisfied the proprieties thus far, we proceeded to the hall for more intimate conversation. He is not as fossilised as he looks. He accompanied me through the garden and kept my glove for a souvenir of the visit. And I think,” Peggy paused and looked into the fire with a dancing gleam of mischief in the grey eyes, “I think,” she added, smiling, “that he will send me a present of a new pair. Now confess, you would never have credited John with being such a sport.”

“When you have finished romancing,” Mrs Chadwick said severely, “perhaps you will explain exactly what you have been up to. If you had wished to see Mr Musgrave you could have accomplished your purpose by remaining at home. He was here this afternoon.”

“That wouldn’t have proved so exciting,” Peggy returned. “He doesn’t open out in front of other people. I like John best in his own home.”

She rose with a laugh, and, approaching the sofa, seated herself at Mrs Chadwick’s side.

“I couldn’t help it,” she said with an affectation of contrition. “It all just happened. Things will, you know.”

And then she gave a more detailed account of the afternoon’s doings. Mrs Chadwick was amused, in spite of a slight vexation. Peggy’s veracious version of her intrusion on Mr Musgrave was disconcerting to her listener; and the anecdote of the glove, which lost nothing in the telling, seemed to Mrs Chadwick, who possessed a certain insight into John Musgrave’s sensitive mind, the last straw in the load of prejudice which would bias John Musgrave’s opinion of her niece. She could cheerfully at the moment have boxed Peggy’s ears. But Peggy, laughing and unrepentant, hung over her aunt and kissed her. Mrs Chadwick was as weak as water when Peggy coaxed.

“I hope he doesn’t send you that pair of gloves,” was all she said.

But John Musgrave did send the gloves. He drove into Rushleigh himself for the purpose of matching the torn glove in his possession, and, failing to do this, posted it to London, and received a similar pair by return. He posted this pair to Peggy with a brief note of apology, which, when she had read it, Peggy, for some unexplained reason, locked away in a drawer.

The note read as follows:

“Dear Miss Annersley,—

“You will, I trust, pardon me for having destroyed in a moment of abstraction the glove you dropped in my garden. I believe I have succeeded in matching it, and hope that the pair enclosed will serve as well as that which my awkwardness ruined. I apologise for my carelessness, and the consequent delay in returning your property.

“Yours faithfully,—

“John Musgrave.”

“But he hasn’t returned my property,” mused Peggy, with the new pair of gloves in one hand and Mr Musgrave’s note in the other. “I wonder what he has done with it?”

Chapter Fourteen.

With the approach of Christmas Mr Musgrave’s quiet home took on the air of an over-populated city. A strange woman in a nurse’s uniform swelled the party in the kitchen when she was not in the nursery with the two youngest members of Mrs Sommers’ family. She was a young, nice-looking woman, and her presence, though welcomed by the other servants, was bitterly resented by Eliza. In Mrs Sommers’ nurse Eliza beheld a rival, though where rivalry came in in a field that admitted no competition it were difficult to say.

When Eliza had condescended to fill the position of housemaid in a bachelor establishment she had not allowed for this objectionable practice of family gathering. Clearly Mr Musgrave should spend Christmas in his sister’s home and not introduce an entire family into his house to the inconvenience of his servants. It was very inconsiderate.

Martha only laughed when Eliza aired her grievance. She liked family gatherings. As well cook for a dozen as for one, she declared. The same amount of trouble with a little extra labour went to the preparation of the larger meals. And Martha loved to have Miss Belle in the house, and Miss Belle’s children. Miss Belle’s husband was there also, and a responsible-looking person who, with an anglicised pronunciation, described himself as a valet. Eliza did not object so strongly to this addition, his manners being irreproachable and the tone of his conversation gentlemanly. Also he saved her trouble by carrying the hot water upstairs and performing many small duties that were not a part of his regular office. He sized Eliza up very quickly, and behaved towards her with such exemplary chivalry that he speedily won her susceptible heart, so that Eliza, with some reluctance, half relinquished the idea that she was destined to become eventually Mrs John Musgrave, in order to entertain the possibility of being selected by Fate as the wife of the gentlemanly valet. The valet, backed with the comfortable safeguard of a wife at home, did nothing to discourage the assumption. Men have not without reason won the distinction of being considered deceivers of the fair sex.

The arrival of the Sommers, and the contemporaneous arrival of a house-party at the Hall, resulted in a succession of entertainments such as Moresby had not previously known. Mrs Chadwick conceived the idea of getting up theatricals and a series of tableaux, in which the Moresby residents were invited to take part. She also got a kinema operator down and invited the entire village to view the films.

The kinema party was fixed for Boxing Night; the tableaux were to follow a dinner to be given on Christmas Eve. The villagers were not bidden to the Christmas Eve party, but the ringers were invited to go up to the Hall after ringing the chime and regale themselves on hot punch.

Moresby on the whole was pleasantly excited. Things were being done in the good old style, even to the distribution of blankets and coals and other comforts acceptable to the season, though received with a certain grudging mistrust which would appear to be the recognised spirit in which to accept charity. There is an etiquette even in the manner of accepting patronage; the recipient feels it incumbent on him to be patronising to the giver of alms in order to retain a proper sense of independence. Let no one who gives blind himself to the fact that he is receiving as well as distributing favours.

John Musgrave gave regularly at Christmas, and handsomely, to his poorer neighbours; Miss Simpson also gave; but, since she demanded gratitude, and Mr Musgrave demanded nothing, regarding his charity in the light of a duty which his more fortunate circumstances imposed, he received a more generous meed of thanks, and a less grudging acceptance of his gifts. Mr Musgrave’s bounty received his personal supervision, and was packed and ultimately delivered by his chauffeur, with Mr Musgrave’s compliments and the season’s greetings; Miss Simpson was her own almoner, and dispensed with her gifts a little timely homily on the virtues of frugality and sobriety, and the need for a humble and grateful heart. But humility—at best an objectionable virtue—has gone out of fashion, and gratitude is a plant which is not usually fostered with the care it deserves. The poor of Moresby accepted Miss Simpson’s gifts—they were glad enough to accept anything—but they ridiculed her homilies behind her back.

“I always believe in a word in season,” she informed the vicar.

“So do I,” he returned. “Only it is so difficult to recognise the season.”

Miss Simpson attended the Hall parties, not because she enjoyed them, but she could not keep away. She made unkind remarks about the Chadwicks and their doings. She was, though she would not have admitted it, jealous. She resented the coming of these people; their careless patronage of the village, which their immense wealth made so easy that it could scarcely be counted to them as a kindness; their untiring social efforts to bring Moresby and Rushleigh into contact, and to gather all sorts and conditions of men and women beneath their hospitable roof. The Chadwicks were altogether too democratic. But above and beyond everything else, the bright, gay personality of saucy Peggy Annersley proved the canker in the rose of her happiness. She suspected Peggy Annersley of having designs on Mr Musgrave, which was unjust. Peggy had designs on no one at that period in her career.

John Musgrave, despite the pressure that was brought to bear to shake his resolution, refused to take part in the theatricals or to pose in the groups for the living pictures. Mrs Chadwick asked him; Belle attempted persuasion; and Peggy coaxed unsuccessfully. Mr Musgrave was embarrassed at the mere suggestion of dressing in character and posturing before the footlights of the newly-erected stage for the edification of Moresby and the amusement of Mrs Chadwick’s guests. He was embarrassed, too, at being compelled to repeatedly refuse his persistent tormentors.

“I did so hope you would be Lancelot to my Guinevere,” Peggy said reproachfully. “And I wanted you to be Tristram and Othello to my Isolde and Desdemona. They are all lovely impersonations, and the costumes are gorgeous. You’d make a heavenly gladiator, too.”

“I should not be at home in these parts,” he said gravely.

“But,” urged Peggy, “it’s so simple. I’ll rehearse you. You’d find it awfully amusing.”

“I do not think so,” he replied.

“Then will you be Bill Sykes, with Diogenes and a revolver?—and I’ll be Nancy. You would only have to murder me. If you don’t like the lover parts you’d enjoy that.”

There was a gleam in the grey eyes that John Musgrave was unable to account for; he saw nothing funny in such a sordid scene.

“I do not like that idea any better,” he said. Then he made a sudden appeal to her generosity, his air slightly apologetic, almost, it occurred to Peggy, humble. “Please leave me out of it,” he begged. “I’m a very prosy person. These things are better suited to the younger generation. Many men will enjoy filling these parts with you; I shall enjoy looking on.”

Peggy gave in. She had not expected Mr Musgrave to agree to her proposes; she had, indeed, been guilty of teasing him. But she endeavoured with some success to make him believe in her acute disappointment, so that when he left her it was with a sense of his own ungraciousness, and a desire to make amends in any way possible for having been disobliging, if not actually discourteous, to a young lady who was, he could not but admit, both amiable and charming. The difficulty was how to make amends. After considering the matter seriously and developing and rejecting many ideas, he decided that he would be forced to remain indebted until the opportunity presented itself for discharging the obligation. He really felt extremely and quite unnecessarily grateful to Miss Annersley. There was, on the face of it, no obligation to discharge. Mr Musgrave was advancing a little way along the road of complexities that go to the making of human emotions. He had begun by feeling an interest in this young woman. Interest is a comprehensive term embodying many sentiments and capable of unforeseen developments. Peggy was undoubtedly a dangerously pretty person to become an object of interest to a middle-aged bachelor.

If Mr Musgrave thought Peggy pretty—and he did consider her pretty—on ordinary occasions, he found her amazingly lovely tricked out in stage attire, when, at the conclusion of the Christmas Eve dinner, he repaired with the other guests to the temporary theatre and viewed a succession of brilliantly arranged tableaux which, despite the fact that they were exceedingly well done and perfectly staged, he mentally pronounced a stupid form of entertainment for intelligent adults. Mummery of any kind appealed to him as undignified. Never in all his forty years had he felt the slightest temptation to play the fool; it always surprised him to see other people doing it. And this histrionic grouping was but playing the fool in serious fashion; it was a game of vanity better suited to children. But the pictures were pretty. He admitted that. Most of the guests appeared to enjoy them.

“I am afraid you are bored with this,” his host said, approaching him during an interval in the performance, having observed with the turning up of the lights Mr Musgrave’s serious expression. “Come along to the billiard-room and have a smoke.”

“I am not bored,” John Musgrave answered, as he left his seat and accompanied Will Chadwick with a willingness which seemed to discredit his assertion. “I was interested, and—and surprised.”

“Surprised,” suggested Mr Chadwick, “that people can find amusement in this sort of thing? Very little amuses most of us. I’ve seen quite brainy fellows absorbed in watching flies pitch on a lump of sugar. Their interest was sporting, and had a financial basis, certainly. In this instance it is the pleasure of the senses that is appealed to. I enjoy watching pretty women posturing myself.”

“I have no doubt it is artistic,” returned John Musgrave reflectively.

It passed through his mind that a pretty woman appeals to the senses quite as effectively in the natural poses of everyday life, but he did not voice his thoughts. The suggestion of women posturing for the enjoyment of the other sex jarred his fastidiousness. John Musgrave held women reverently in his thoughts, or, rather, he held his ideal of womanhood in reverence; he knew very little about women in reality.

There was a fair sprinkling of men in the billiard-room when they entered, who had repaired thither for their refreshment during the interval. They were smoking and drinking and criticising, with a freedom which occurred to Mr Musgrave as not in the best of taste, some of the scenes that had been staged and the persons who had taken part in them. John Musgrave found himself standing near a couple of young men from Rushleigh whom he knew very well by sight, though he was not acquainted with them. One of them was engaged in watching two men playing a hundred up; the other was eagerly talking to his inattentive companion about Peggy Annersley, whose posturing had apparently pleased his appreciative eye.

“She’s the gardener,” he was saying, and Mr Musgrave frowned with annoyance when he realised who it was the youth was discussing with such avidity. “A lady gardener—a real lady, you know.”

His friend, if he heard, showed no interest; his attention was centred in the balls. The youth jerked his arm.

“She is,” he insisted, “a real lady. I know it for a fact.”

“All right, my dear chap,” the other returned, unmoved. “I know quite a nice girl who sells shrimps.”

Mr Musgrave felt his anger rising, though why he should feel angry he did not understand. It hurt him that Peggy Annersley’s name—the young cub spoke of her as Peggy—should be bandied about in this fashion. It hurt him more that Peggy should be satisfied to dress up and posture for the delectation of these youths. When the rest of the men left the billiard-room he remained behind alone.

Chapter Fifteen.

“Oh,” said Peggy Annersley, “I didn’t suppose there would be anybody here.” This was not strictly accurate, because Peggy had seen Mr Musgrave through the open door as she was passing the billiard-room and had entered on the spur of the moment to discover why he was there, and alone. Such is the bump of feminine curiosity. “Have you been here long?”

“Since the interval,” he answered, rising at her entry, and confronting her with the shame-faced air of a man caught playing truant.

“Then you missed the pictures?”

“I was present during the first half of the programme,” he explained, feeling awkward under the steady regard of the observant grey eyes. To have missed viewing the pictures he began to realise was a breach of his duty as a guest.

“And you didn’t care for them?”

“I would scarcely put it that way,” Mr Musgrave said very earnestly. “The pictures were pretty; but the room was very hot; I preferred remaining here. Are the tableaux finished?”

“Not quite. But my part in them is. I came out became I was so thirsty. I’ve just been murdered by Othello.”

She seated herself on a settee and smiled at John Musgrave, who stood surveying her with gravely-intent gaze. She was still attired in Shakespearian costume and wore a little jewelled cap on her bright hair, which fell about her shoulders and gave her an air of extreme youth. John Musgrave, while he regarded her, was thinking how pretty she looked.

“You appear to have a predilection for being murdered,” he observed. “What shall I get you—lemonade?”

She made a negative movement of her head.

“Champagne, please. I’m frightfully tired.”

Mr Musgrave poured out a glass of the sparkling wine and handed it to her. He stood behind her while she drank it, and when she finished the wine he took the glass from her and replaced it on the table. When he turned about from performing this office he observed Miss Annersley put out a hand towards a box of cigarettes within reach. He had not suspected before that she smoked. Her action occasioned him a most unpleasant shock. Peggy was to experience a shock also. Before she could select a cigarette and withdraw her hand from the box another hand closed suddenly upon hers and held it firmly. John Musgrave had come quickly behind her and imprisoned her hand with his own.

“Please don’t do that,” he said. He leaned over the settee, his face almost on a level with hers, his eyes meeting hers steadily. “I’ve no right to dictate to you... but I wish you wouldn’t smoke.”

A glint of laughter shone in Peggy’s eyes. The situation was growing increasingly funny. In her world, to see women smoke was such an ordinary matter that it had not struck her that anyone—not even John Musgrave—could possibly object. But John, of course, was Moresby, and Moresby had its traditions, and lived by them.

“Why?” she asked.

“It’s—unwomanly,” he returned seriously.

“Oh!” said Peggy. “What, I wonder, is conveyed exactly by the term ‘womanly’? I understood that that expression belonged to the Middle Ages.”

“I hope not,” Mr Musgrave said.

“Well, define it.”

“A womanly woman,” Mr Musgrave began slowly, weighing his words as though he felt that the subject were deserving of his utmost care in an appropriate selection of language, “is first and foremost a gentlewoman.”

“H’m!” commented Peggy. She was tempted to interrupt him in order to inquire if he did not consider her a gentlewoman, but refrained.

“She is,” Mr Musgrave proceeded, “considerate in her actions and in her conversation. She is always sincere and thoughtful for others; and she would never do anything unbecoming to her sex, or unworthy of herself. That is what I understand by the term womanly.”

“She would be a bit dull, don’t you think?” Peggy hazarded. “She sounds priggish to me. Do you really believe you would like her, Mr Musgrave? I think you’d be fed up in no time. She wouldn’t, for instance, permit you to stand talking to her and holding her hand all the while. That would, according to your definition as I interpret it, be unseemly on her part.”

John Musgrave promptly released her hand and straightened himself and looked grave. Peggy laughed.

“That would have been better left unsaid,” she remarked demurely. “It was an indiscretion of speech. I fear it would take me a long time to learn how to be womanly, don’t you?”

“Don’t you think that possibly you are womanly without knowing it?” he asked.

“Shall I tell you what the term womanly conveys to me?” Peggy said.

“If you will,” he replied.

“It suggests a woman of a big nature and a warm heart. She doesn’t bother her head as to whether what she is doing is becoming; but her conscience troubles her when she does something which is not quite square and honest, which is perhaps a little mean. She strives to be helpful and companionable and sympathetic, and she detests censoriousness and unkind criticism, either in herself or others.”

“I am afraid,” Mr Musgrave said, with an insight which Peggy had not credited him with possessing, “that you are rebuking me for impertinence.”

Peggy flushed, and raised her face quickly to his.

“No,” she contradicted; “no. I think you meant to be kind.”

There was something very bewitching in Peggy’s upturned face, in the unwonted earnestness of her eyes, and the sweetly serious curve of the parted lips. John Musgrave, as he returned her steady gaze, was more powerfully influenced than he had any idea of. He believed that his interest in Peggy was of the paternal, platonic order. Many people become obsessed with the platonic ideal and travel far along the road of life without discovering that between a man and woman platonic affection is unnatural. There have been instances of platonic love, but these are few; it is a rare and an abnormal emotion.

“I wish,” he said with unusual impressment, “that you would do something to please me.”

“What is that?” inquired Peggy, with an instinctive understanding of what he had it in his mind to ask.

“I want you to promise that you will give up smoking.”

Peggy did not alter her position; neither did John Musgrave. As she sat looking up at him, a tiny pucker knitting her brows, he remained bending over her, intently watching her face without the alteration of a muscle in his own. He anticipated her answer; none the less he felt extraordinarily disappointed when she spoke.

“I can’t do that,” she said. “It isn’t,” she added slowly, “that I do not wish to oblige you, nor that it would be exactly difficult for me to make such a promise. But I can’t recognise any reason why I should. It would be tantamount to an admission that I agree with you that the practice is objectionable. I do not. And I do not wish to encourage your mistaken belief by acquiescing in it. I am sorry. But, you see, I should feel myself something of a humbug if I promised that. I will not, however, offend your sensibilities by smoking in your presence.”

“It is the act itself, not the place or time of committing it that is of importance,” he said with a touch of displeasure.

Peggy considered this ungracious of him; he might at least have thanked her for her consideration for his feelings.

“In that case,” she returned audaciously, “perhaps you will be so kind as to light me a cigarette?”

Mr Musgrave felt annoyed, and showed it.

“No,” he answered bluntly. “At the risk of appearing discourteous, I decline to do that.”

Peggy was not affronted. She would have thought less of him if he had complied. If one possessed principles, even when they chanced to be mistaken, one had to be consistent and act in accordance with them. Peggy was faithful to her own principles, and she liked sincerity in others.

At that moment, falling upon the sudden hush in the room which had followed John Musgrave’s curt speech, starting on a single note, thrice repeated, and then bursting into a joyous peal, the Moresby chimes broke softly on the stillness, died away on the wind, and were borne back to their listening ears with a fuller, sweeter cadence, conveying the message of the centuries of peace and good-will upon earth. Peggy, when she caught the sound, rose slowly to her feet.

“They’ll be assembling in the hall now,” she said, and looked at John Musgrave. “We had better join them.”

“Yes,” he said.

Suddenly she held out her hand.

“Peace and good-will,” she said, smiling. “We’ve got to be friends, you know, on Christmas morning.”

“Yes,” agreed John Musgrave, consulting the clock. “But it wants ten minutes to the hour yet.”

Peggy broke into a little laugh and withdrew her hand hastily before he could take it.

“Your speech admits of only one interpretation,” she said; “you don’t wish to befriends before the hour strikes.”

“My remark must have been very misleading to have conveyed that impression,” he returned. “I was not aware that we were upon unfriendly terms. A difference of opinion does not necessitate the breaking of a friendship.”

“Perhaps not,” agreed Peggy, looking amused. “But it strains the relationship somewhat. Come along, Mr Musgrave, and toast the friendship in a bumper of milk punch.”

Mr Musgrave accompanied her from the room, and emerging at her side into the great hall, already thronged with the other guests, was instantly separated from his companion by half a dozen eager young men, who bore Peggy away among them and left Mr Musgrave on the outskirts, as it were, of the festivities, looking, as he felt, utterly stranded and out of touch with his surroundings.

Miss Simpson, who had sought in vain for him throughout the evening, seeing him standing alone, so evidently out of his element, made her determined way across the width of the hall and joined him. Mr Musgrave did not feel as grateful to her as he might have felt. He spent much of his time on these social evenings in carefully avoiding her. But it is not always possible to evade a person whose purpose in life it is to frustrate this aim, particularly when the object of the pursuit shrinks from hurting the pursuer’s feelings, Therefore when Miss Simpson hurried up to Mr Musgrave, with anxiety and determination in her eyes, he received her with the reserved politeness of a perfectly courteous person, accepting the inevitable with a fairly good grace.