LITMIR.BIZ

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to the spring where Lettie sat playing with the water, getting little cupfuls to put into the kettle, watching the quick skating of the water-beetles, and the large faint spots of their shadows darting on the silted mud at the bottom of the trough.

      She glanced round on hearing him coming, and smiled nervously: they were mutually afraid of meeting each other again.

      “It is about tea-time,” he said.

      “Yes — it will be ready in a moment — this is not to make the tea with — it’s only to keep a little supply of hot water.”

      “Oh,” he said, “I’ll go on home — I’d rather.”

      “No,” she replied, “you can’t because we are all having tea together: I had some fruits put up, because I know you don’t trifle with tea — and your father’s coming.”

      “But,” he replied pettishly, “I can’t have my tea with all those folks — I don’t want to — look at me!”

      He held out his inflamed, barbaric hands.

      She winced and said:

      “It won’t matter — you’ll give the realistic touch.”

      He laughed ironically.

      “No — you must come,” she insisted.

      “I’ll have a drink then, if you’ll let me,” he said, yielding. She got up quickly, blushing, offering him the tiny, pretty cup.

      “I’m awfully sorry,” she said.

      “Never mind,” he muttered, and turning from the proffered cup he lay down flat, put his mouth to the water, and drank deeply. She stood and watched the motion of his drinking, and of his heavy breathing afterwards. He got up, wiping his mouth, not looking at her. Then he washed his hands in the water, and stirred up the mud. He put his hand to the bottom of the trough, bringing out a handful of silt, with the grey shrimps twisting in it. He flung the mud on the floor where the poor grey creatures writhed.

      “It wants cleaning out,” he said.

      “Yes,” she replied, shuddering. “You won’t be long,” she added, taking up the silver kettle.

      In a few moments he got up and followed her reluctantly down. He was nervous and irritable.

      The girls were seated on tufts of hay, with the men leaning in attendance on them, and the manservant waiting on all. George was placed between Lettie and Hilda. The former handed him his little egg-shell of tea, which, as he was not very thirsty, he put down on the ground beside him. Then she passed him the bread and butter, cut for five-o’clock tea, and fruits, grapes and peaches, and strawberries, in a beautifully-carved oak tray. She watched for a moment his thick, half-washed fingers fumbling over the fruits, then she turned her head away. All the gay tea-time, when the talk bubbled and frothed over all the cups, she avoided him with her eyes. Yet again and again, as someone said: “I’m sorry, Mr Saxton — will you have some cake?”— or “See, Mr Saxton — try this peach, I’m sure it will be mellow right to the stone,”— speaking very naturally, but making the distinction between him and the other men by their indulgence towards him, Lettie was forced to glance at him as he sat eating, answering in monosyllables, laughing with constraint and awkwardness, and her irritation flickered between her brows. Although she kept up the gay frivolity of the conversation, still the discord was felt by everybody, and we did not linger as we should have done over the cups. “George,” they said afterwards, “was a wet blanket on the party.” Lettie was intensely annoyed with him. His presence was unbearable to her. She wished him a thousand miles away. He sat listening to Cresswell’s whimsical affectation of vulgarity which flickered with fantasy, and he laughed in a strained fashion.

      He was the first to rise, saying he must get the cows up for milking.

      “Oh, let us go — let us go. May we come and see the cows milked?” said Hilda, her delicate, exquisite features flushing, for she was very shy.

      “No,” drawled Freddy, “the stink o’ live beef ain’t salubrious. You be warned, and stop here.”

      “I never could bear cows, except those lovely little highland cattle, all woolly, in pictures,” said Louie Denys, smiling archly, with a little irony.

      “No,” laughed Agnes D’Arcy, “they — they’re smelly,”— and she pursed up her mouth, and ended in a little trill of deprecatory laughter, as she often did. Hilda looked from one to the other, blushing.

      “Come, Lettie,” said Leslie good-naturedly, “I know you have a farmyard fondness — come on,” and they followed George down.

      As they passed along the pond bank a swan and her tawny, fluffy brood sailed with them the length of the water, “tipping on their little toes, the darlings — pitter-patter through the water, tiny little things,” as Marie said.

      We heard George below calling “Bully — Bully — Bully — Bully!” and then, a moment or two after, in the bottom garden: “Come out, you little fool — are you coming out of it?” in manifestly angry tones.

      “Has it run away?” laughed Hilda, delighted, and we hastened out of the lower garden to see.

      There in the green shade, between the tall gooseberry bushes, the heavy crimson peonies stood gorgeously along the path. The full red globes, poised and leaning voluptuously, sank their crimson weight on to the seeding grass of the path, borne down by secret rain, and by their own splendour. The path was poured over with red rich silk of strewn petals. The great flowers swung their crimson grandly about the walk, like crowds of cardinals in pomp among the green bushes. We burst into the new world of delight. As Lettie stooped, taking between both hands the gorgeous silken fullness of one blossom that was sunk to the earth. George came down the path, with the brown bull-calf straddling behind him, its neck stuck out, sucking zealously at his middle finger.

      The unconscious attitudes of the girls, all bent enraptured over the peonies, touched him with sudden pain. As he came up, with the calf stalking grudgingly behind, he said:

      “There’s a fine show of pyeenocks this year, isn’t there?”

      “What do you call them?” cried Hilda, turning to him her sweet, charming face full of interest.

      “Pyeenocks,” he replied.

      Lettie remained crouching with a red flower between her hands, glancing sideways unseen to look at the calf, which with its shiny nose uplifted was mumbling in its sticky gums the seductive finger. It sucked eagerly, but unprofitably, and it appeared to cast a troubled eye inwards to see if it were really receiving any satisfaction — doubting, but not despairing. Marie, and Hilda, and Leslie laughed, while he, after looking at Lettie as she crouched, wistfully, as he thought, over the flower, led the little brute out of the garden, and sent it running into the yard with a smack on the haunch.

      Then he returned, rubbing his sticky finger dry against his breeches. He stood near to Lettie, and she felt rather than saw the extraordinary pale cleanness of the one finger among the others. She rubbed her finger against her dress in painful sympathy.

      “But aren’t the flowers lovely!” exclaimed Marie again. “I want to hug them.”

      “Oh, yes!” assented Hilda.

      “They are like a romance — D’Annunzio — a romance in passionate sadness,” said Lettie, in an ironical voice, speaking half out of conventional necessity of saying something, half out of desire to shield herself, and yet in a measure express herself.

      “There is a tale about them,” I said.

      The girls clamoured for the legend.

      “Pray, do tell us,” pleaded Hilda, the irresistible.

      “It was Emily told me — she says it’s a legend, but I believe it’s only a tale. She says the peonies were brought from the Hall long since by a fellow of this place — when it was a mill. He was brown and strong, and the daughter of the Hall, who was pale and fragile

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