Miss Bird's heart was full, as she was taken up to her old bedroom by Joan and Nancy. Such a welcome! And from the Squire too, of whom she had always stood much in awe, but to whom she looked up as the type and perfection of manhood!
But how he had aged! When she was left alone, she looked out on to the spring green of the park, and the daffodils growing under the trees, and thought of how many years it was since she had first looked out on to that familiar scene, and how unchanged it was, although the children she had taught, and loved, had all grown up, and most of them were married. She thought of herself as a young, timid girl, for the first time away from her home, and of the Squire as a splendid young man, bluff and hearty even then. She had spent the best part of her life at Kencote, and had slept more nights in this room than in any other. Kencote had been her home, and she had grown old in it. If the Squire, who had always been so vigorous that the years had passed over him imperceptibly, was also at last growing old, it was in the place he loved above all others. She liked to think of him and dear Mrs. Clinton still living here, she hoped for many years to come, with nothing changed about them, but only an added peace and quietness, to suit the evening of their lives.
Later in the evening, before dinner, the Squire paid a long-deferred visit to his cellars. The house would soon be filled from top to bottom with guests, and he wished to put the best he had before them, or before such of them as could appreciate it; also to take stock generally of the supply of wines in ordinary use, which he did regularly, but had not done for many months past. He was accompanied by his old butler with the cellar-book, and a footman with a candle, and spent nearly an hour among the bins and cobwebs.
At the end of the inspection, some slight trouble arose. The old butler had been fetching up claret which the Squire had intended should be kept for a time. He did not drink claret himself, and had not noticed the change.
"If we had used the other lot up you ought to have come and told me, Porter," he said. "I never meant this wine to be used every day. You come down here without a with-your-leave or a by-your-leave, and act as if you were master. You've been with me for a number of years, and have come to think you can do what you like. But you can't. I won't have it, Porter."
He marched off between the bins, and up the cellar steps. The old butler looked after him with a smile on his face, of which the attendant footman mistook the source, remarking, "He do give it you, don't he?"
"They're the best words I've had from him for a long time," said the old man. "He's got back to himself again."
But if the Squire had got back to himself, it was not entirely to his old habits. It had never before been Mrs. Clinton's custom to sit with him in his room, as he now liked her to do, and as she did that evening, while the younger members of the party, including Miss Bird, were disporting themselves in the billiard-room.
"This will be the last of it, Nina," he was saying. "When Frank marries it won't be from this house. They call it a quiet wedding, but, 'pon my word, I don't know how we could very well have found room for any more than are coming. I'm rather dreading it in a way, Nina. I feel I'm getting too old for all this bustle."
"We shall be very quiet when it is all over," said Mrs. Clinton.