"Well, that's the right spirit. We ought to enjoy our own good deeds!" laughed Merle.
As Aunt Nellie was really a consideration in regard to noise, the young people had taken over the harness room as a temporary boudoir during the holidays. They carried down some basket chairs, tacked a few coloured pictures from annuals on its bare walls, and made it look quite pretty. Tom lighted them a blazing fire every day, and tended it during their absence with the care of a vestal virgin, so they were extremely cosy and jolly there. The joiner's bench and the glue-pot gave facilities for any hobbies they wished to carry on; they could make as much noise as they liked, and walk in and out with dirty boots, unreproved.
To Bevis this visit was elysium. All his experiences of young people had been confined to school, and he had never before spent such a holiday.
"It's grand to be in a home like this!" he said, once, to Mavis. "I can't help thinking, sometimes, how different life would have been to me if my mother had lived. It's hard not to have even the slightest remembrance of her. Suppose she had been here now and living at 'The Warren'!"
"Perhaps. It'll be rather a forlorn business though, being in that big house with only a pack of servants. I believe I'll take a voyage round the world in a yacht. The fact is I can't quite see my future. I'm going to Cambridge, but after that things are vague. I always had dreams of a profession, but the lawyers say I ought to settle down on the estate. What's a fellow to do?"
"I wouldn't worry your head about it yet. There'll be plenty of time to think things over while you're at College," counselled Mavis. "Enjoy your holidays at any rate."
"No mistake about that. I'm having the luck of my life!"
It was only to Mavis's sympathetic ear that Bevis poured out these confidences. With Merle he was on different terms. He called her 'Soeurette' (little sister) and was always ready for some joke with her. She and Clive together led him a lively time, as well as keeping him busy helping them to make boxes, build a boat, and several other joinering enterprises.
"It does Bevis all the good in the world to be teased!" declared Merle.
"He certainly gets it, then!" laughed Mavis.