“Oh, no, it isn’t. That’s only veneer. We shall play Beggar-my-neighbour. You will see.”
They came, and Peggy conquered. And Mrs. Owen, as she walked home in her goloshes, thought that perhaps it would be neither “those Graingers” nor “those Alingtons,” but “those dear Graingers and Alingtons.”
Fishing had begun, and Peggy at once saw that nothing else mattered. The fact that it was dry-fly work, and she at present hardly knew one end of a rod from the other, did not interfere at all with her determination to fish, and, as a matter of fact, she hooked a trout (who must have been mad) on the third day, which agitated her so much that she fell into the river, and had to go home. Hugh, however, went on, and Daisy stopped down with him. Peggy toiled up to the house, her wet skirt clinging to her with almost touching fidelity, and impeding her movements as only a wet skirt can. Going through the hall, and dropping showers of blessings as she passed, she saw that the mid-day post had just come in. There was a pile for her, and nothing for Hugh except a telegram. So there was no letter from Edith to him to-day, unless, indeed, it had come by the morning post. That was unusual, however, it always arrived by this second delivery. Yet there was a telegram.
Then, quite suddenly and causelessly, Peggy felt anxious, and it became necessary to send this telegram down to him by the river, so that if there was bad news he should get it at once. She felt certain that it did contain bad news, and longed for a moment to open it herself. But she could not do that, and so merely scribbled on the outside, “Send it back to me to read.” Then she went upstairs to change.
A quarter of an hour afterward she was laughing at her fears, for he had it back, opened, to be given to her, and it contained the words merely—
“No time to write yesterday. Lovely weather, very busy, so well.”
Peggy remained in her room till lunch-time, answering her post, and by degrees she grew troubled again. What was Edith so busy with? There was nothing that could make her busy except her play. Was Andrew Robb back again?
Hugh, as often happened when he was fishing, did not appear at the luncheon hour, and Peggy, according to custom, began alone. Still some vague misgiving obsessed her; she had, in any case, to laugh at her fears, which showed that her fears, though she did not know what they were, were there. Through the dining-room window, looking out on to the gravel in front of the house, she saw a telegraph boy arrive on a bicycle, and she felt sure this was a second telegram for Hugh, which again, for the sake of his peace of mind, she would have to send down to him at once. Again she was completely wrong; the telegram was for her, and was of no importance whatever. It was easier to laugh at her fears after this, but still she had to laugh at them. If she did not, they reappeared.
She finished lunch alone, but about now the sun, after a cloudy morning, dispersed the encumbrances and shone vigorously. That would make fishing impossible for the afternoon—Hugh would soon be up from the river with Daisy, ravenous for food.