“How sweet,” said Delia, watching the little creature as, with tail erect, it paced daintily beside them. “I do love them like that.”
“So do I, and so does father. I believe if anything happened to Poogie he’d be as sick about it as I would.”
“I don’t wonder.” And, all unconsciously, the speaker had more completely won Yvonne’s heart.
Even the shyest—and Delia was not addicted to shyness—would have felt at ease as they sat down, a party of three. Haldane had a frank, easy way with him towards those he did not dislike, calculated to make them feel at home, especially in the case of a bright, pretty, and intelligent girl, and soon all three were chatting and laughing as if they had known each other all their lives. Delia was at her best, and talked intelligently and well, as she could do when temporarily emancipated from the depressing atmosphere of Siege House.
“What a beautiful place Hilversea Court is, Mr Haldane,” she said presently.
“Yes. Too big for me. Very good as a show place; but for living in give me a box like this.”
The said “box” at that moment looked out upon a wondrously lovely bit of summer landscape—great clouds of vivid foliage against the blue sky; intervening seas of meadow, golden with spangling buttercups; and in the immediate foreground a stretch of green lawn, flower-bedded, and tuneful with the murmur of bees, blending with the plash of the stream beyond. Within, all was correspondingly bright and cheerful.
“Father says Hilversea Court exists for the sole purpose of framing old Mr Wagram,” said Yvonne. “That Grandisonian, old-world look about him wouldn’t be in keeping with anything more modern.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” assented Haldane. “But, as I said before—never to the Wagrams, though—the place is much too big to live in.”
“I suppose they are passionately attached to it?” asked Delia.