'You won't need to look after any fire but your own, Master George,' said she, 'and not that, unless it amuses you. Margery is not a lazy girl--I would not own her for my niece if she was. And besides that, there will be Barnes to help to carry in the coal.'
Barnes was one of the under-gardeners. He lived with his father and mother at the Lodge, but he had never had anything to do with the house, so I was surprised at what Hoskins said.
'Oh yes,' George explained, looking very business-like and nodding in a way he had, 'that is one of the things papa and I have settled about. We are rigging up a room for Barnes, much nearer than the Lodge--the old woodman's hut within a stone's throw of _our_ hut, Ida, so that a whistle would bring him in a moment. He will still live at the Lodge for eating, you see, but he will come round first thing and last thing. He's as proud as a peacock; he thinks he's going to be a kind of Robinson Crusoe; it will be quite a nice little room; there is even a fireplace in it. He says he won't need coals; there's such lots of brushwood about.'
'_I_ have been thinking of that,' I said eagerly. 'It would seem much more in keeping to burn brushwood than commonplace coals----'
'Except in my kitchen, if you please, Miss Ida,' put in Hoskins.
'And better still than brushwood,' I went on, taking no notice of Hoskins's 'kitchen,'--I would much rather have had a gypsy fire with a pot hanging on three iron rods, the way gypsies do, or are supposed to do,--'better than brushwood, fir cones. They do smell so delicious when they are burning. We might make a great heap of them before next winter. It would give the children something to do when they are playing in the wood.'
[Illustration: ORDERING DENZIL ABOUT AS USUAL.]
They--the two little ones--were of course in tremendous spirits about the whole thing,--such spirits that they could not even look sad for very long when at last--about three weeks after the days I have just been describing--the sorrowful morning arrived on which dear papa had to leave us. Esmé cried loudly, as was her way; Denzil, more silently and solemnly, as was his; but an hour or two afterwards we heard the little butterfly laughing outside in the garden and ordering Denzil about as usual.