"No, I don't, and I don't want to. I only know that vines and pomegranates and all the other glorious things of the Song of Songs seem to be in the air when spring begins. It is a Song of Spring."
"It always seems to me a very peculiar sort of song," remarked Annabel; "and I don't understand it and don't pretend to. I remember Uncle William once expounding it at prayers for the sake of the servants, but I doubt if they were much the wiser for his exposition. I know I wasn't."
"I should have been," I exclaimed fervently. "It must have been a liberal education to hear him. And to think that it was wasted upon you and the servants, when I—who alone could have appreciated it—was not there!"
"It wasn't only me and the servants: papa was there and Aunt Maria, and there were several people staying in the house."
"By the way, Ponty has delivered herself of a simply priceless judgment to-day," I said, and proceeded to retail to my sister the story of the man whose house was struck by lightning because he left it too much to servants.
Annabel laughed heartily. Then, after a moment's pause, she said: "But all the same, Reggie, I don't quite see what difference his being at home would have made."
I stood still in the garden path, and regarded my sister with profound admiration not unmixed with wonder. "Annabel," I exclaimed, "in your own particular way you are almost as priceless as Ponty!"
CHAPTER III
FRANK
One afternoon a few days after the foregoing conversations, when Annabel and I were seated round (as far as it is in the power of two persons to sit round anything) the old gate-legged table in the hall at the Manor, having our respective teas, the door-bell clanged, and the butler in due sequence ushered into our midst Arthur Blathwayte and another—which other was destined to play an important part in the dawning drama of my life.