"I'll carry it," said Mr. Wriford and took the cloak; "and we won't keep along the parade. We'll go that walk of ours in towards Yexley Green and round by that white house with the jolly garden and come out on to the cliff. That'll give us plenty of time to get back."
Essie laughed and skipped. "Plenty of time! How you can keep it up like that I can't think. My goodness, if you oughtn't to be on the stage! Hope you like carrying that cloak!"
"Well, there'll be a shower or two, I shouldn't be surprised," said Mr. Wriford. "Anyway, it'll do to sit down on when we get over to the cliff and sit down—to arrange."
II
This white house with the jolly garden that was to be the turning-point of their walk had come to be quite a place of pilgrimage since its chance discovery on the first morning of the holiday. "Whitehouse" was its name. It was tenantless. An auctioneer's placard announced that it was for sale. They had walked far along the cliffs from Whitecliffe Sands on that first morning, had taken a winding lane that led to Yexley Green, and in the lane suddenly had come upon Whitehouse, with which immediately Essie, and Mr. Wriford scarcely less, had fallen most encaptivatingly in love. A high wall surrounded it. They had explored its garden: kitchen garden with fruit trees; and a bit of lawn with a shady old elm; and enticing odd little bits of garden tucked here and there behind shrubberies and in corners; and a little stable—at the stable Mr. Wriford had said: "That's where you'd keep a fat little pony, Essie, and have one of those jolly little governess cars and drive into Whitecliffe every day to do the shopping." And "Oh, if ever!" Essie had cried delightedly; and immediately and thenceforward the thing had been to come here every day and imagine Whitehouse was theirs and plan the garden—sadly neglected—as they would have it if it were. One storey high, the house, and white, and "sort of bulging, the darling," as Essie had said, with the effect that the three ground-floor rooms and even the kitchen at the back were spaciously circular in shape. High French windows—"My goodness, though, if there aren't more windows than walls almost!" Encircled all about by a wide, paved verandah.
"It's the very house for an author," Mr. Wriford had declared. "Shut away from everything by that jolly old wall, Essie; and this room—come and look at this room, Essie—this would be mine where I'd write. It must get the sun pretty well all day, and it's sort of away from the others—quite quiet. Couldn't I write in there!"
Essie with her nose flat against the window: "Oh, wouldn't it be glorious! Can't I just see you sitting in there writing a book! Perhaps I'd be out on the verandah here with a little dog that I'd have and just have a peep at you sometimes!"
To-day as they came by Whitehouse and turned towards the cliffs there was a sudden development of these imaginative ecstasies. The showers that Mr. Wriford had foreboded, heralded by watery clouds trailing up from the west, approached in quickening drops of heavy rain as they came through Yexley Green. They were at Whitehouse when sudden midsummer downpour broke and descended.
"My goodness!" cried Essie.
"We'll shelter in the porch—in the verandah," said Mr. Wriford and opened the gate. "Run, Essie!"