“Come along,” said Mervyn extending a hand. “It’s quite safe—from seven to nine inches thick. We can walk all over it now, can even walk back on it instead of through the wood.”
And they did; but first they went up it to where it narrowed to its head, where the feeding stream trickled in. Two wild ducks rose with alarmed quacking, and winnowed away at a surprising velocity over the tree-tops.
“There’d have been a good chance if I’d got a gun,” remarked Mervyn. “I come along at dusk sometimes and bag a brace. Old Sir John Tullibard up at the Hall gave me a sort of carte blanche to shoot anything in that line, and told the keeper to cut me in when the pheasants wanted thinning down. He’s a decent old chap, but isn’t at home much. To put it nakedly he’s a regular absentee landlord, but his people seem snug enough.”
“The Hall? What sort of place is it? What’s it called?”
Mervyn laughed.
“Why I do believe you’re scenting old stones already. Well, it’s rather a jolly old place, Plane House it’s called. Old Tullibard’s my landlord.”
“Good. We must have a look over Plane House.”
“Easy enough. If the old man comes over we’ll go and dine there. I do that when he is here, but that’s not often. He’s an old Indian too, though we weren’t in the same part. Now he prefers hanging out on the Riviera. I don’t. Old England’s good enough for me. Look at this for instance.”
She did look, and thoroughly agreed. They were walking down the frozen surface of the pond as on a broad highway. The gossamer branches of the leafless trees shone in the sunlight, picked out in myriad frosted, scintillating patterns of indescribable delicacy against the cloudless blue of the winter sky, and, in between, the dark foliage of firs. Now and then a slide of snow from these, dislodged by the focussed rays of the midday sun, thudded to the ground, with a ghostly break upon the silence of the woodland. But the air—crisp, invigorating—Melian’s cheeks were aglow with it, and the blue eyes, thus framed, shone forth in all the animation begotten of the scene and surroundings. Mervyn stared, in whole-souled admiration, likewise wonderment.
“Well done, my ‘flu’ convalescent,” he cried, dropping an arm round her shoulders. “You’ve come to the right sort of hospital and no mistake.”