"I shouldn't wonder. He's grown softer somehow. See how interested he was in the kitchen. Who do you think it is, Nancy?"
"My dear! Don't you know that? It's Grace Ettien. Didn't you notice what a fuss father made of her when she last come over? Took her all round, and almost gave her the place. He doesn't treat girls like that as a rule."
"You didn't say so at the time."
"No; but I've put two and two together since. You see if I'm not right. By this time next year the dower-house will be occupied by Captain and Lady Grace Clinton—and oh, Joan! perhaps there'll be another baby in the family!"
The ecstasy of the twins at this prospect was broken into by Miss Bird, who appeared behind them in the doorway and promised them their deaths of cold if they did not come indoors at once.
In the meantime Dick was trotting along the hard country lanes, between the silent silvered winter woods and the frozen fields, always with an eye about him to see what things of fur and feather might share with him the winter solitude, what was doing in the hard-bound soil, and what in the clear spaces of the air. He had the eye of the countryman, trained from boyhood to observe and assimilate. He had lived for years the life of court and camp, had adapted himself as readily to the turmoil of London gaieties as to regimental duties in other stations at home and abroad, or to months of campaigning in Egypt and South Africa. He had skimmed the cream of all such experiences as had come in his way, but here in the depths of the English country, just here where his ancestors had lived for generation after generation, were placed the foundations of his life. Here he was at home, as nowhere else in the world. All the rest was mere accident of time and place, of no account as compared with this one spot of English soil. Here alone he was based and firmly rooted.
Mountfield lay about four miles from Kencote, and the two estates marched, although the one was small as compared with the other. Two years before, Jim Graham, the owner of Mountfield, had married Cicely Clinton, and his only sister just before that had married Walter Clinton, the doctor of Melbury Park, where the Squire was so averse to looking for an heir. So the Clintons and the Grahams were bound together by close ties, and there was much coming and going between the two houses.
Cicely's carriage was before the door as Dick rode up, and she herself came out as he dismounted. She looked very pretty in her thick furs, young and fresh, and matronly at the same time.
"Oh, Dick, I'm so glad to see you," she said. "Have you come to see Jim? I'm afraid he's gone over to Bathgate, and won't be back for some time."
"H'm! That's a bore," said Dick. "You're going over to Kencote, aren't you, Siskin?"