Anybody would like a young man like Mr. Brace! Even Aunt Anastasia, when she came to know him. Even she would rather I were a bank manager's wife than that I went on being a lady's-maid for the rest of my life....
"And, besides, I'm not like poor Million, who's allowed her affections to get all tangled up in the direction of the sort of young man who'd make the worst husband in the world," I thought, idly, as I turned my head more comfortably on the cushion. "Poor dear! If she married Mr. Jessop, it would be better for her. But still, she would be giving her hand to one man, while her heart had been—well, 'wangled,' we'll say, by another. How dreadful to have to be in love with a man like that mercenary scapegrace of a Jim Burke! How any girl could be so foolish as to give him one serious thought——"
Here I gave up thinking at all. With my eyes shut I just basked, to the tune of the bees booming in the scented thyme about me and the waves washing rhythmically at the foot of the tall white cliff on the top of which our noisy party had been feasting.
It was nice to be alone here now, quite alone.... The washing of the waves seemed presently to die away in my ears. The booming of the bees in those pink cushions of thyme seemed to grow fainter and fainter.... Then these sounds began to increase again in a sweet, and deep, and musical crescendo. Very pretty, that chorus of the bees!
I kept my eyes shut and I listened.
The refrain seemed actually to grow into a little rhythmic tune. Then—surely those were words that were fitted to the tune? Yes! I caught the words of that tender old Elizabethan cradle song:
"Gol-den slum-bers kiss your eyes!"
For a second I imagined that the Serio-girl had stolen up, and, thinking I was asleep, had begun to sing me awake.
Then I realised that it was a man's voice that crooned so close behind my ear.
Quickly I opened my eyes and turned.