CHAPTER IV
AT LARKLAND
Next day, when the storm was over and the sky was a windy blue, Merrylips rode in her godmother's coach to her godmother's house of Larkland. And there at Larkland, with the godmother that she had so feared to meet, Merrylips lived for almost a year and was very happy.
Larkland, to be sure, was a tiny house beside great Walsover. There were no lads to play with, and there were no dogs, except one fat old spaniel. There was no great company of serving-men and maids to watch at their tasks and be friends with. Neither was there a going and coming of guests and kinsfolk to keep the house in a stir.
Yet Merrylips found much to please her. Though the house was little, it was very old. It was said to have a hidden chamber in the wall, such as great Walsover could not boast. And with her own eyes Merrylips could see that there was a moat, half choked with water-weeds, and a pond full of carp that came sluggishly to the surface when crumbs were flung to them.
Though there were not many servants, there was among them an old butler, who all his life had served Lady Sybil's father, the Duke of Barrisden. He taught Merrylips to shoot at the butts with a crossbow, and while he taught her, told her tales of how, as a young man, he had gone with his Grace, the duke, to fight the Spaniards at Cadiz and to serve against the Irish kerns in Connaught.
There was too an old, old woman who had been nurse to Lady Sybil's mother. She sat knitting all day in a warm corner by the kitchen hearth or on a sunny bench against the garden wall. This old woman, in her old, cracked voice, would sing to Merrylips long ballads—The Lord of Lorn and the False Steward, and Chevy Chace, and The Fair Flower of Northumberland. At such times Merrylips listened with round eyes and forgot to miss her brothers.
But dearer to Merrylips even than Roger, the butler, or Goody Trot, the old nurse, or even Mawkin, her own kind maid from Walsover, was her godmother, Lady Sybil. For Lady Sybil, dwelling in that forgotten corner of Sussex, with only her few servants, was, as she had said, a lonely woman. She had a heartful of love to give to Merrylips, and it was a love that had wisdom to find the way to lead the little maid to what was for her good. So Merrylips, to her own surprise, found herself presently sewing seams and making tarts and toiling over lessons. In short, she did all the tasks that she had hated to do at Walsover, yet now she did them happily.
This was partly because she felt that she should do the bidding of her godmother, who so plainly loved her, and partly because the tasks were put before her in so pleasant a way. When she sewed seams, she was learning to make shirts and handkerchiefs for Longkin and Munn and Flip. When she baked a burnt and heavy little pasty, she was learning to cook—a knowledge that in camp might prove most useful to a gentleman. When she struggled with inky pothooks, she was learning to write long letters to her dear, big brothers.
There were other lessons, too, that Merrylips had not had at Walsover. Lady Sybil taught her Latin, in which she was herself an apt scholar, and Merrylips set herself eagerly to learn this tongue, because it was what her brothers studied.