Again Delia smiled, for she remembered having let out that she was a ready shorthand writer during that former conversation.
“Well, now, what I suggest is this: I have rather a pressing matter of business to finish off this morning, so, if you will excuse me, I propose to turn you over to Rundle. He will show you every hole and corner of the house; he knows it like a book. We only looked at it cursorily last time you were here. That will take you all the morning. After lunch—we lunch at one—I can take you over the outside part of the job myself. The Old Country Side is a first-rate pictorial, and we must do justice to Hilversea in it, mustn’t we?”
Delia professed herself delighted, as indeed she was. Then Rundle, having appeared in response to a ring, Wagram proceeded to direct him accordingly.
“Show Miss Calmour all there is to see, Rundle,” he said, “and work the light for her so as to get everything from the best point of view for photography. I showed her the priest’s hiding-place the other day, so you needn’t; besides, you don’t know the secret of it.”
“No, sir; and it’d have been a good job if some others hadn’t known there was such a thing,” said the old butler in historic allusion. “This way, miss.”
Delia appeared at lunch radiant and sparkling. Rundle had proved a most efficient cicerone, she declared; indeed, so much had there been to see and hear that she wondered how on earth she was going to compress her notes into the required limit. Wagram was in a state of covert amusement, for he knew that his father was not forgetting his former dictum.
“A Calmour at Hilversea! Pho! it’d be about as much in place as a cow in a church!”
And yet, here was this bright, pretty girl, who talked so intelligently and well—why, she might have been anybody else as far as keeping the old Squire interested and amused was concerned.
“Now, Miss Calmour, which shall we take first—the animals or the chapel?” said Wagram as they rose from table.
“The animals, I think, because it may take some time, and the sun is not as reliable as it might be. The chapel I can get much easier with a time exposure, if necessary.”