ANTE-PRANDIAL VISITORS
He looked and beheld a small maiden clad in a holland frock, with a white linen hat on the back of her gold-brown curls, instead of being set in orthodox fashion upon her head. Her white shoes and socks, fresh with the morning, were a little reddened with walking through the “Tenby” garden, which, as Pauline had borne witness, contained no grass whatever.
Just behind her was a small boy, sitting very firmly on a little red tricycle.
“Hello!” said Hugh; “very glad to see you, I’m sure. Friends who look you up in the low ebb of the hours before breakfast are friends indeed. Come along up, both of you, and tell me your names.”
But Lynn stood loyal and steadfast at the foot of the steps, while she put the first necessary and searching question that was his due.
“Have you had whooping cough?” she said.
Hugh clutched his hair. He told her he [p56] was searching himself through all the crannies of his boyhood years. Yes, he remembered. He had undergone the affliction. There was a birthday party away back twenty, thirty, forty years through the mists, and she would have been at it, with her hair done in two little plaits and tied with blue ribbon. And he had to stay away because he had whooping cough.
Lynn looked very much relieved.
“What a good thing!” she said. “It is very seldom you get it twice, so we shan’t hurt you.”
“No,” he said gravely, looking down on them, “you really don’t look as if you would hurt me—much. But won’t you come on the verandah? And can the gentleman alight by himself?”
Lynn came up the steps a little shyly.
But Max, though he got off his tricycle, looked a bit worried.
“He won’t stand,” he said. “Will you lend me your hank’fust to tie him to the post? he’s a lood horse.”
“He means a blood horse,” explained Lynn in a low tone; “he always pretends his tricycle is a race-horse.”
Hugh lent the handkerchief—even offered to assist in the tying.
“I’d like to have given him a feed, poor old Trike,” said Max, “only—” and he looked [p57] regretfully around the garden—“you’ve no grass, have you?”
“I’ve no grass,” said Hugh; “but did you never try him on white daisies? It wouldn’t do, of course, to feed common horses on them, but a blood steed like yours, why, it would make his coat shine like varnish.”
Max’s eyes grew brilliant at the notion, and he rattled his charger up to a bank near, that was white with the flowers, and stuck the thing’s head into it and fed him with handfuls of petals.
“Why, why,” he shouted, “he’s getting shinier every minute—and his mane’s growing longer and longer.”
From that moment he regarded Hugh as a man and a brother.
But Lynn had got to business.
“No,” she said when offered a chair—“oh, no, thank you, we can’t stay—Miss Bibby doesn’t know we’ve come. But will you please deal with Larkin?”
“Deal with Larkin?” Hugh repeated.
“Yes, he’s Octavius Smith, not Septimus, and much better. Mamma deals with him, and his bacon is only elevenpence, and he’ll always bring your letters, too.”
“Bacon!” said Hugh, hungrily. “I’d deal with any one who has bacon if it is fried and eggs are thrown in with it.”
“Oh,” said Lynn, “he never throws them; [p58] they’re always packed very carefully in sawdust. And he doesn’t mind how often he comes with the things you’ve forgotten, and he gives you rides on his horse, and everything. He’s really much better than that horrid Howie, and he does so want to get a piano for Blanch and Emma, and buy out Octavius and Septimus, and put his mother in, because she works too hard on the farm. You will deal with him, won’t you?”
By dint of a few questions Hugh put himself in possession of the facts, and found out that his visitors were also his nearest neighbours. He discovered, too, that he would have been called upon by the whole quartet, but that it had been considered, in family conclave, that four was perhaps too great a number for a morning call. And further, it was necessary for Miss Bibby to see some figures about the garden. So the question was solved by drawing lots, which fell, greatly to the disgust of Pauline and Muffie, to Lynn and Max.
“I know you’ll go and spoil it all,” said Pauline. “I could do it so much better.”
So Lynn was on her mettle and fought hard in Larkin’s cause.
“I tell you what we’ll do,” said Hugh, struck with a brilliant idea, “you shall come with me, and we’ll go straight up to this Larkin’s. You have made me feel that I can exist no longer without some of the prime, [p59] middle cuts of his bacon at elevenpence.”
“Oh,” said Lynn, “Miss Bibby!” She was torn between Larkin and duty.
“Oh, of course, we’ll go and ask permission first,” said Hugh; “and we might leave Trike behind, eh, Max? After a feed like that he’ll want a rest.”
Away they went out of the gate and across the road.
Miss Bibby was down at the gate, fluttering with vexation. She had just found out that two of her naughty charges had actually dared to go and trouble the sacred peace of the famous novelist, and before he could have breakfasted!
She positively could hardly keep the tears back.
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