Miss Delorme looked through the gap in the trees at the quiet gun-metal sea, surging between the cliffs. She sniffed up the soft air with its tang of salt and peat. There was in her young mind the desire to dance and run from sheer lightness of spirits. Crabbit sat upon the doorstep and eyed her with grave curiosity. He had twice endured being caught up and called a dear darling.
A well-ordered villa on the outskirts of Folkestone seemed to belong to another world, with its orthodox morning slits of open window airing the rooms, its neat and congested garden, where calceolarias, geraniums and lobelia were replaced by spring bulbs each year, in the same week, on the same day, if it did not rain. Where rooms were turned out on their appointed day and the bitter cold of leafy June never could call a fire into existence once the grate was ornamented with a plant mausoleum in chequered pottery. Here, at Castle Freyne, the asters still lingered, with here and there a flower upon them. Thomas, the old gardener, was declaring the Missus 'd ate the face off him if he delayed lashin' in thim bulbs a day longer; but what could he do when he could not lay his hand to them in any place—an' he knowin' he put them away careful.
The thought of Miss Eva Delorme with spring bulbs which would not be found brought a bubble of laughter to Psyche's lips.
Phil was bringing the hunters out for a mouthful of sweet grass, placidly letting them graze between the flower-beds.
"Destroyin' the lawn before the masheen, Phil!"
"Won't the blast of the roller flatten it!" returned Phil cheerily. "And it is the sweetest taste in the place, Thomas—like nuts, it is."
From some unseen abyss fat Anne's voice thundered to Phil that his breakfast was waitin' on him, an' if he didn't come to it there were dogs in plenty, as she would not be disorganized with the table led all night.
"Wasn't I in ten minnits ago an' not a sign of it?" replied Phil pleasantly. "So I to run out with these two, Anne; put me bit of bacon on the range, Anne Macree, till I gits in to it."
Anne Macree replied fierily in a voice of complete good-humour that it was Cragsbread his likes should be gettin', same as the Germans, and that there was a few cakes in the oven for the upstairs breakfast which he could have if he'd hurry up, himself an' his Macrees.
A shaft of light came through the grey clouds, making a bar of silver on the steely sea; the sky, travelling quickly, now showed little flecks of blue and flaws of pearly white. Yesterday's cold wind had gone.