"I thought Mrs. Cooper, our old housekeeper, would come back and manage matters for you, father. She is very skillful and nice, and she knows your ways. Watkins quite understands the garden, and I myself, I am sure, will be allowed to come over once a fortnight or so. There is one thing--you must be very, very careful of your money, and Watkins must try to sell all the fruit and vegetables he can. Fluff, of course, can not stay here. My next thought is to arrange a home for her, but even if I have to leave next week, she need not hurry away at once. Now, father, if you will excuse me, I will go out to Watkins, for I have a great deal to say to him."
"I have something to say to you, Fluff," said Frances.
The young girl was standing in her white dress, with her guitar hung in its usual attitude by her side. She scarcely ever went anywhere without this instrument, and she was fond of striking up the sweetest, wildest songs to its accompaniment at any moment.
Fluff, for all her extreme fairness and babyishness, had not a doll's face. The charming eyes could show many emotions, and the curved lips reveal many shades either of love or dislike. She had not a passionate face; there were neither heights nor depths about little Fluff; but she had a very warm heart, and was both truthful and fearless.
She had been waiting in a sheltered part of the garden for over an hour for Arnold. He had promised to go down with her to the river--he was to sketch, and she was to play. It was intensely hot, even in the shadiest part of the squire's garden, but by the river there would be coolness and a breeze. Fluff was sweet-tempered, but she did not like to wait an hour for any man, and she could not help thinking it aggravating of Arnold to go on pacing up and down in the hot sun by the squire's side. What could the squire and Arnold have to say to each other? And why did the taller and younger man rather stoop as he walked? And why was his step so depressed, so lacking in energy that even Fluff, under her shady tree in the distance, noticed it?
She was standing so when Frances came up to her; now and then her fingers idly touched her guitar, her rosy lips pouted, and her glowing dark-blue eyes were fixed reproachfully on Arnold's distant figure.