However, on Monday, Adrian, as his manner was, shook himself free of this weight of care and announced that no one was to bother about him and his needs. The dinghy--which was bigger than the average dinghy carried by an eight-ton yacht, and which belonged to the Romillys--would do well enough for fishing, he said. And for the rest, he had made various appointments with John Badger of Champles--the farm on the Down above Bell House--connected with rats and young rabbits.
"Besides the lawn must be kept decent," he concluded; which was his way of saying that the ancient gardener, "Hennery" Doe, could not be left to bear what Mrs. Jeep called "the blunt" of the Bell House gardens.
So content was restored, and Mrs. Romilly wrote to her husband that "the children were perfectly sweet"; they were certainly of the kind that has a sense of responsibility very much awake.
On that day--Monday--Miss Lasarge came down to the Bell House, stayed to tea, and was a joy to everybody--especially Hughie, who adored her--but it struck Pamela that she was a little less talkative than usual; perhaps even a little absent-minded. She went away early and said she had gardening to do.
Nobody noticed this but Pam, and she, sitting at her window in the evening looking straight across the sea-wall, the rocks, and the tide rippling out over the golden sand, decided that the Little Pilgrim was in love with Major Fraser. "Why don't people settle things comfortably and be done with it," thought Pamela vexedly. "They are both nice, and they could live at Fuchsia Cottage."
On Tuesday morning, so early as the nine-o'clock breakfast hour, came a surprise.
It had been raining in the night, and was still drizzling, with an inclination to clear up, when Mollie Shard burst upon the scene in an atmosphere of wet wind and scent of salt.
She had not had breakfast. It appeared that Auntie A. was not down, and as Miss Shard had something to communicate that refused to be kept back till conventional hours she had left Crown Hill, in a "trench" coat and no hat, racing down to the Bell House to see her friends, and tell her tale.
Everybody was down and beginning, except Pamela, and the conversation was a perfect rattle of questions and answers.
"Suppose," said Mrs. Romilly, "you let Mollie tell us what she has been doing."