Harry came into the garden as they were clamouring their questions, with his retriever wagging its tail at his heels. He was seventeen now, grown almost to his full height, but his face was still that of a boy. There was a radiant look of health and happiness in it. He was extraordinarily good to look at, not only because of his beauty, of form and feature and colouring, which was undeniable, but because of this sort of inward light, which suffused it with a sense of perfection that went right through him. Mrs. Grant caught her breath as she looked at him. She saw him as some wonderful work of God, without flaw, untroubled in his happiness. Whatever disturbances there might be among the figures of coarser clay by whom he was surrounded, there must be some breath of finer spirit in each and all of them, since he stood on the threshold of manhood as he was, here before her eyes.
The matter in hand was the building of a log cabin in a bit of forest that reached down from the wooded hill behind the Vicarage garden. Harry and the children had been working at it for a month or more, and it was to be a very perfect specimen of a log cabin.
"Why haven't you brought the saw?" said Jane, turning upon Pobbles. "Go and fetch it."
"It's your turn," said Pobbles. "Can't always be fetching things for you."
"Be quick," said Jane. "We're wasting time. Come on, Harry, we'll start. He can run after us."
"Don't know where to find the saw," said Pobbles, untruthfully.
"Jane will go and help you," said Harry. "Hurry up, both of you."
Jane put her long legs in rapid motion without a word, Pobbles pounding along after her on his shorter ones. Harry laughed. "That's the way to talk to them," he said.
Jane returned bearing the saw, Pobbles following. They set off immediately for the wood, and the voices of all three of them were heard for a long time in animated conversation through the hot drowsy air.
Lady Brent sat in her business room, engaged in affairs, or apparently so. Business room it was called, but it was little like one except for the large writing-table in the window at which she sat, and as a matter of fact she transacted most of the actual business of house and estate which fell to her share in a room downstairs called the Steward's room, which was far more severely furnished. This large upstairs room, with its deep embrasured window looking on to the park, was her fastness, and she did not often withdraw herself into its seclusion. It was next to her bedroom, and might have been better called her boudoir, but that the ancient and severe splendour of its furnishing would have seemed to rebuke such a name. It was richly carved and panelled, the furniture was heavy and sombre, and lightened by none of the modern touches which made the long drawing-room downstairs, which was mostly used, bright and even gay. This room was as characteristic of the old romantic Castle as any in it. It spoke of a time long gone by, and of a life more austere than modern life is apt to be. There were few comforts in it but a great deal of rich massive dignity. When Lady Brent ensconced herself in it she was the chatelaine of the Castle, seated in state, and as formidable as it was in her power to make herself.