’Oh,’ she exclaimed, ’I beg your pardon. Brown wants to know if he can do anything for you to-night,’ turning to Ross.
’He can hang himself,’ replied my grateful brother, ’after he’s put my sister in a cab.’
’I don’t want a cab,’ I said. ’I’d rather wait and go in one of sister’s four.’
Going home, the Gidger remarked, ’I don’t think I like going to see my gweat-aunt much. Need I go any more? and I hate hymns. What is a sign of grace, muvver?’
A telegram awaited me at the hotel to say that the rooms at Fernfold are vacant, so I have wired to say we will take them from the 28th of January. Oh, when shall I get a letter from my Belovedest?
We left the Savoyard after lunch yesterday and arrived at this pretty little village in time for tea.
I suppose Uncle Jasper would say that I must get in a bit of ’background’ now, but I’d so much rather be ’dim and confused.’
And is Surrey ’clear cut’? Is any county in the south of England, except perhaps Cornwall, with its spray-worn rocks and fringe of foaming sea?
This little village—you can look it up on a map if you want to. It’s near a powder factory and a Pilgrim Way, and yet not so _very_ near them! In summer it is cupped in a circle of gorse and broom, and all the country round is a soft blur of silver birches and heather. There are bits of common land and little woods with nightingales, there are cowslip fields as well, but at the moment everything is deep in snow.
Our lodgings are in a house with a nice new thatch and my sitting-room is exactly opposite one of the village pubs.
The landlady is a Mrs Tremayne—Cornish, of course—and a regular character. She has a loud voice and she shouts all her remarks at the top of it. She calls every one ’my dear,’ in Cornish fashion. Her first remark was, ’Well, now, my dear, I ’ope you’ll be comfortable like. You’ve had a ’ansome but cold day for travelling, and no mistake.’ She is a dear old thing, and Nannie seems to like her.
The Gidger made a conquest of her at once. She was a nurse for many years before she married, so ’likes to hear a child about the house.’
The rooms were very clean, but bare, and in spite of a nice fire looked rather appalling and comfortless as a prospective winter residence. However, after a very sleepy Gidger had been put to bed, Nannie and I unpacked. Ross had given me a big box of flowers, and I filled all the vases and jars, and set out lots of photographs and books and cushions, and by the time dinner was ready I had transformed my sitting-room into quite a habitable place with the homey feel that books and flowers and firelight always give, while Nannie worked miracles upstairs in bedrooms.