“I don’t think she is,” said Meg. “I think Mummy sees people rather as she sees flowers; things to be fed and staked and protected.”
“You’re always crabbing Mummy, Meg. It’s a shame!—Isn’t it a shame, Mummy dear!” Barbara protested, and Barney tempered the apparent criticism—peacemaker as he usually was—with: “But you have to understand flowers jolly well to make them grow. And we do her credit, don’t we!”
Miss Toner looked from one to the other as they spoke, with her clear, benignant, comprehending gaze, and Mrs. Chadwick stared with her March Hare ingenuousness that had its full share, too, of March Hare shrewdness. She undertook no self-justification, commenting merely, in the pause that followed Barney’s contribution: “I don’t know what you mean by self-analysis unless it’s thinking about yourself and mothers certainly haven’t much time for that. You’re quite right there, my dear,” she nodded at Miss Toner, adding in a tone intended specially for her: “But young people often exaggerate things that are quite, quite simple when they come.”
CHAPTER IV
“COME out and have a stroll,” said Oldmeadow to Nancy. Tea was over and a primrose-coloured sunset filled the sky. They walked up and down the gravelled terrace before the house.
Coldbrooks stood high, yet encircled by still higher stretches of bare or wooded upland. Its walled garden, where vegetable beds and lines of cordon apple-trees were pleasingly diversified by the herbaceous borders that ran beneath the walls, lay behind it; most of the bedroom windows looked down into the garden. Before it, to the south, lawns and meadows dropped to a lake fed by the brooks that gave the place its name. Beyond the lake were lower copses, tinkling now with the musical run of water and climbing softly on either side, so that from the terrace one had a vast curved space of sky before one. The sun was setting over the woods.
It was Barney’s grandfather, enriched by large shipping enterprises in Liverpool, who had bought the pleasant old house, half farm, half manor, and Barney’s father had married the daughter of a local squire. But the family fortunes were much dwindled, and though Barney still nursed the project of returning one day to farm his own land there was little prospect of such a happy restoration. In spite of the Russian ballet and London portents, he was fonder, far, of Coldbrooks than of all of them put together. But he could afford neither time nor money for hunting, and his home was his only for week-ends and holidays. It was the most loveable of homes, more stately without than within, built of grey-gold Cotswold stone with beautiful stone chimneys and mullioned windows and three gables facing the southern sky. Within, everything was rather bare and shabby. There was no central heating, and no bathrooms. The tiger-skin that lay on the stone flags of the hall had lost all its hair. The piano rattled and wheezed in many of its notes. The patterns of the drawing-room chintzes were faded to a mere dim rosy riot, and stuffing protruded from the angles of the leather arm-chairs in the smoking-room. But it was, all the same, a delightful house to stay in. Eleanor Chadwick’s shrewdness showed itself in her housekeeping. She knew what were the essentials. There was always a blazing fire in one’s bedroom in the evening and the hottest of water with one’s bath in the morning. Under the faded chintz, every chair in the drawing-room was comfortable. The toast was always crisp; the tea always made with boiling water; the servants cheerful. Mrs. Chadwick had a great gift with servants. She could reprove with extreme plaintiveness, yet never wound a susceptibility, and the servants’ hall, as she often remarked with justice, was smarter and prettier than the drawing-room. Johnson, the old butler, had been at Coldbrooks since before her marriage, and the grey-haired parlourmaid had come with her when she had come as a bride. These familiar faces added depth to the sense of intimacy that was the gift of Coldbrooks. Oldmeadow loved the place as much as any of the Chadwicks did, and was as much at home in it.
“There is a blackcap,” said Nancy, “down in the copse. I felt sure I heard one this morning.”
“So it is,” said Oldmeadow. They paused to listen.
“It’s the happiest of all,” said Nancy.