“I’m afraid you will find Ottinge terribly dull. I wonder how you discovered a place so far from everywhere—just the back of beyond?” and she looked at him interrogatively—her dark blue eyes were extraordinarily piercing.
To this impertinent remark no reply was necessary, as it brought them precisely to the Manor gate. The lady nodded, and walked on quickly—a slim, active, resolute figure, with the straining fox-terriers dragging at her hands, the little bulldog trotting sedately at her heels. The group passed steadily out towards the open country, with the light rain drifting down upon them. What queer people one came across in Ottinge! Miss Parrett, the ill-tempered old bully, the Hon. Mrs. Ramsay, with her soft voice and expressive eyes, eking out a living by making herself a slave to strangers’ dogs.
“Oh, so she sent a verbal message, did she?” snorted Miss Parrett. “Well, when I was a girl,”—turning to her sister—“and people asked me out, I always wrote them a proper note; but manners are not what they were in my day. Oh, if my dear, courteous father could only know of some of the things that are done, he would turn in his grave!”
Miss Parrett was fond of quoting the old Colonel, and insisting upon his devotion to herself; whilst, if the truth were known, they had been bitterly antagonistic to one another during his lifetime, and the Manor was the frequent scene of acrimonious quarrelling, unfilial gibes, and furious rejoinders.
It was fully a quarter of an hour later when Miss Morven arrived with the brass-headed carpet nails.
“I knew she had them!” she declared triumphantly; “for she got a lot for us last winter, so I ransacked the shop, and, after a long search, where do you think I found them, Susan?”
“In her pocket, to be sure!”
“No, not quite—probably I shall next time. In one of the brown teapots she has on sale! She was surprised—I wasn’t! She is getting quite dotty, and won’t have help; and there is Dilly, her pretty, flighty granddaughter, with nothing to do but flirt!”
All that day Wynyard worked zealously, assisting the carpenter (who had come after all) and in unpacking and dusting books that had not seen daylight for thirty years. On this occasion, in spite of Miss Parrett’s condescending invitation, he dined at Holiday Cottage.
That very same evening Mrs. Ramsay came to tea at the Manor, and was fervent in her admiration of the drawing-room, which praise Miss Parrett absorbed with toothless complacency, saying in her quavering bleat—