unluckily fallen ill, just as milady lent me the machine, and there it and the pony stand idle, and we' – regretfully eyeing her domain – 'are, as you see, like a hay-meadow.'
Talbot does not speak for a moment. A great idea is labouring its way to birth in his mind – an idea that may give him a better foothold here than any casually escaped fox or precarious porterage of messages can ever do.
'Why should not I mow?' asks he at last.
'You?'
'Yes, I; and you lead the pony.'
She looks at him, half inclined to be angry.
'Is that a joke?'
'A joke – no! Will you tell me where the pony is? May I harness it?'
Again she looks at him, waveringly this time, and thence to her turf. It is already an inch and a half too long; by to-morrow morning it will be three inches, an offence to her neat eye; and when Jacob falls ill he is apt to take his time about it. She yields to temptation.
'I will call the boy.'
But the boy is out —marbleing, vagranting after his kind about the near village, no doubt.
They have to harness the pony themselves; and by the time that they have put the bridle over her head, inserted her feet into her mowing shoes, and led her out of her dark stall into the sunny day, John has almost recovered the ground he had lost since that fortunate hour when, with three drops of his blood, he had bought a square inch of oil-silk and a heavenly smile.
They set off. Loudly whirs the machine. Up flies the grass in a little green cloud, which the sun instantly turns into deliciously scented new-mown hay; sedately steps the pony; gravely paces Margaret beside her; honourably John stoops to his toil behind. It is not a pursuit that lends itself much to conversation; but at least he has continuously before his eyes her flat back, her noble shoulders, the milky nape of her neck; and can conjecture as to the length of her unbound hair by counting the number of times that the brown plait winds round the back of her broad head. Every now and then they pause to empty out the grass, and each time a few words pass between them.
'Is Jacob very ill?'
'I am afraid that he suffers a good deal.'
'Is he likely to die?'
'Heaven forbid!'
'Because if he is, I wish you would think of me.'
He is half afraid when he has said this; it verges, perhaps, too nearly upon familiarity.
But she is not offended. Her eye, flattered by her shaven lawn, cannot rest very severely upon him who has shaven it for her. Her spirits have risen; exhilarated by the wholesome exercise, by the sunshine, by who knows what. Only when her look falls now and again upon Prue, still flung listlessly on the garden-seat, with her nosegay – not more flagging than she – withering on the ground beside her, does a cloud come over it.
'Should I get a good character from your last place?' returns she playfully.
'From the Foreign Office?'
'Was it the Foreign Office?' with a momentary impulse of curiosity for which she instantly pulls herself up. 'You know one always expects to get a character from the last place.'
'I do not know whether it is a good one. It is a nine-years' one.'
Then they set off again. Next time it is about Prue.
'I hope she is not ill?' his eyes following Margaret's to the little forlorn figure under the Judas-tree.
'No-o.'
'Nor unhappy?'
'We all have our Black Mondays' – evasively – 'only some of us have Black Tuesdays and Black Wednesdays as well – ah!'
What has happened to her? Her gloomy sentence has ended in a suppressed cry of joy, and her cheeks have changed from pink to damask. He turns to seek the cause of this metamorphosis.
'Why, there is Ducane!'
In an instant his eyes have pounced back upon her face. It is settling again into its pretty normal colours, but the joy is still there.
'Yes, there is Freddy!' she acquiesces softly.
A sharp needle of jealousy pricks his heart. This, then, is why she received him so frigidly. She was expecting the other.
'We stop now, I suppose?' he says abruptly.
'What! tired already, Jacob's would-be successor?' asks she rallyingly.
'Hardly. But I supposed that you would wish to stop.'
'On account of Freddy?' – with a little shrug. 'Pooh! he is a fly on the wall; and besides, he – he is not coming this way.'
It is true. Straight as a die young Ducane is making for the Judas-tree; and from under that Judas-tree a little figure, galvanised back into youth and bloom, rises, walking on air to meet him.
The eyes of John and Margaret meet, and he understands. As he goes home he feels that he has made a real step in advance this time. He shares a secret with her. He knows about Prue!
CHAPTER X
'Our Master hath a garden which fair flowers adorn,
There will I go and gather, both at eve and morn:
Nought's heard therein but Angel Hymns with harp and lute,
Loud trumpets and bright clarions, and the gentle, soothing flute.
'The lily white that bloometh there is Purity,
The fragrant violet is surnamed Humility:
Nought's heard therein but Angel Hymns with harp and lute,
Loud trumpets and bright clarions, and the gentle, soothing flute.'
'Well,' cries Peggy anxiously, as, the young men having taken leave, she sees her sister come running and jumping, and humming an air, to meet her, 'is it all right?'
'Of course it is all right,' replies Prue, vaulting over the tennis-net to let off a little of her steam. 'If it had not been for your long face, I should never have doubted it.'
'Yes?'
'It was just as I expected; he was too polite to leave them. He says he never in his life remembers spending two such tedious days; but he is so unselfish. He says himself that he knows he is full of faults, but that he cannot understand any one being selfish, even from the point of view of their own pleasure. He said it so simply.'
'H'm!'
'I was so sorry for you, Peggy – saddled with that tiresome John Talbot all morning. Of course I ought to have helped you; but you know I had not a word to throw to a dog. It was very provoking of him, wasting all your morning for you.'
'My morning was not wasted,' rejoins Margaret calmly. 'He may be a very bad man, but he mows well.'
'He might as well have finished it while he was about it,' says Prue, captiously eyeing the lawn. 'It looks almost worse than it did before, half mown and half unmown.'
For an instant
