There was plenty of general chatter, and the whole party strolled about, ate fruit, and picked flowers together.
A tall fair young man was rather feebly sweeping the garden path. He touched his cap as the party passed him, and said, in a cracked, but cordial voice, “There’s rasps down yonder, sir, for t’yoong leddies.”
Guy recognised him, with a start of distaste, as the “soft” lad he had seen in the churchyard.
“Thank you, Jem,” said Godfrey, “we’ll look for them. This way, isn’t it, Jeanie?”
Jeanie was very shy, and very much afraid of these “clever girls;” she secretly disliked the thought of them. But it was pleasing to find how open they were to raspberries and Morelia cherries, and, in the afternoon she felt a pride in showing them over the house, and pointing out the pictures and other curiosities.
Guy avoided this part of the entertainment, on the excuse of making arrangements about the time of return, and as he came back from interviewing the driver of the waggonette, he found that Florella was in the garden, sketching a bit of snap-dragon on the top of the low wall that divided it from the fruit-garden. Guy made for her pretty blue dress, which reminded him of her blue harebells.
“Do you like the flowers better than the house?” he said.
“I did not much want to go over the house,” she answered; “and if you please, Mr Waynflete, I think I should like to tell you why.”
“Why, have you any reason?” said Guy, startled.
“Yes,” she answered. “Of course it is a very silly thing, and my sister never thought of it but as the merest joke; but I have always felt it was more wrong than we knew. When we were here, we used to hide and make odd noises, to see whether we could make people think it was the ghost.”