Sibyl sprang to the defence, and there was a general struggle and romp interspersed with screams, which was summarily stopped by Mr. Rollstone explaining severely, ‘If you think that is the deportment of the aristocracy, Miss Ida, you are much mistaken.’
‘Bother the aristocracy!’ broke out Herbert.
Calm was restored by a summons to a round game, but Sibyl’s curiosity was of course insatiable, and as she sat next to Herbert, she employed various blandishments and sympathetic whispers, and after a great deal of fuss, and ‘What will you give me if I tell?’ to extract the end of the story, ‘Did he call the keeper?’
‘Oh yes, the old beast! His name’s Best, but it ought to be Beast! He guffawed ever so much worse than she did!’
‘Well, but who was it?’
And after he had tried to make her guess, and teased his fill, he owned, ‘Mrs. Bury—a sort of cousin, staying with Lady Adela. She isn’t half a bad old party, but she makes a guy of herself, and goes about sketching and painting like a blessed old drawing-master.’
‘A lady? and not a young lady.’
‘Not as old as—as Methuselah, or old Rolypoly there, but I believe she’s a grandmother. If she’d been a boy, we should have been cut out of it. Oh yes, she’s a lady—a born Morton; and when it was over she was very jolly about it—no harm done—bears no malice, only Ida makes such an absurd work about every little trifle.’
CHAPTER XV
THE PIED ROOK
Constance Morton was leaning on the rail that divided the gardens at Northmoor from the park, which was still rough and heathery. Of all the Morton family, perhaps she was the one who had the most profited by the three years that had passed since her uncle’s accession to the title. She had been at a good boarding-house, attending the High School in Colbeam, and spending Saturday and Sunday at Northmoor. It had been a happy life, she liked her studies, made friends with her companions, and enjoyed to the very utmost all that Northmoor gave her, in country beauty and liberty, in the kindness of her uncle and aunt, and in the religious training that they were able to give her, satisfying longings of her soul, so that she loved them with all her heart, and felt Northmoor her true home. The holiday time at Westhaven was always a trial. Mrs. Morton had tried Brighton and London, but neither place agreed with Ida: and she found herself a much greater personage in her own world than elsewhere, and besides could not