"Here we are, Bluebell," cried Harry, grasping rugs, sticks, and umbrellas, and throwing them to the porter.
She sprang up and looked around with intense interest. They were nearing her first _pied-à-terre_ as a married woman. But the journey was not yet ended, and they transferred themselves to a fly, in which an old grey horse waited sleepily.
"Lucky I thought of ordering it," said Harry; "it is the only one here, of course."
"Harry!" cried Bluebell, rubbing her eyes, as if only just thoroughly awake, "have you got a house? Where in the world are we going to?"
"I couldn't think why you didn't ask that before, you little fatalist, taking it all in such a predestined way. I hope you don't think it a case of the Lord of Burleigh over again? It is only a cottage, Bluebell; but I think it is comfortable, and one mercy is no one will be able to find us here!"
The extreme advantage of this isolation scarcely seemed so apparent to her; and as the above sentence was the only connected or rational one Harry gave utterance to, conversation, properly so called, was _nil_ during the drive. After skirting a hanging wood, and passing some water meadows, where red Herefordshire cows with white faces grazed under the low wintry sky, they drove through a primitive village, and, turning down a bye-road, drew up at a queer gabled cottage. It was very picturesque and odd-looking, and Harry, during his last leave home, had spent a night there on a visit to an artist friend, who was making sketches in the neighbourhood.
Its proprietor, a carpenter, sometimes lived in it, and sometimes was able to let it to gentlemen coming down to fish in the river. On receiving Dutton's telegram, he and his wife, who had given up all hopes of letting it for the winter, gladly laid down their best carpets, brought out their summer chintzes, and arranged everything in apple-pie order, for the cottage was taken for a month certain.
Harry had not forgotten to order a piano to be hired from the nearest town. After their long journey it all looked very home-like and attractive. They ran about the house like two children, examining everything. The sitting-room was the prettiest, with its two bay-windows at right-angles, low roof and rafters. The artist had gone abroad, and had left some of his pictures on the wall in charge of the carpenter--a bewitched Greuze, copied in the Louvre; the inevitable study of a bird's-nest and primroses; a girl standing at a wash-tub by an open window, on the sill of which outside leaned an Irish peasant, with his handsome, blarneying face. Then there were sketches taken in the neighbourhood. "I remember this one half finished on his easel," said Harry. It was a glade of a forest; in the fore-ground a huge oak, knee-deep in bracken, and tall blue hyacinths. "Look Bluebell, here is your name-sake flower."