"Since you must have dropped from the skies yourself to have reached home at all, it need excite no wonder," he said.
"Me!" she replied demurely. "Why, I arrived at my father's door, like a correct young lady, long enough before any of you wanderers and vagabonds thought of returning. Our good friend the oyster-captain, as Cuth will call him, sent me a message by one of Mr. Feltham's shepherds that my father wanted me to nurse him, and I hastened to obey. Mrs. Feltham lent me her own habit, and I rode home with my groom, behind me, in grand style for an honest charwoman just released from washing teacups and beating eggs. My wages taken in kind loaded the panniers of my steed, and I felt like a bee or an ant returning to the hive with its store of honey."
"That is my best medicine," murmured Mr. Lee, as the merry laugh with which Audrey's words were greeted rang through the house.
Mr. Lee was slowly counting his remaining coin. He looked at Audrey. Without another word she led her brothers away, Effie following as a matter of course, and left him with his friend.
"Come and look round," whispered Audrey to Edwin.
"And help," he answered. "It does not square with my ideas to let strangers put a prop against the falling roof and I stand idle."
"Conceited boy!" cried Audrey, "to match your skill against our oyster-captain's."
She ran lightly down the veranda steps and pointed to the bluff sailor, hammering at a sheet of iron he had brought from the ruins of the stable to patch the tumble-down walls of the house.
With the rough-and-ready skill of a ship-carpenter he had set himself to the task the moment he arrived.
"No, no thanks, my boys," he said, as Edwin and Cuthbert looked up at the strong framework of beam and cross-bar which he had erected in so brief a space, and burst into exclamations of wonder and delight.