"Oh, what a shame," Hazel expostulated. "Then whose are these?"
"Why, Hugh's," her brother informed her, with an irrepressible chuckle. "And it is all very well to cry shame, Hazel; but why do you suppose this suit looks so decent? Because, forsooth, Hugh puts it carefully away and wears mine whenever he can. And again, why has mine become so extremely shabby? Because, when he has it on—and he manages to wear it pretty often, let me tell you—he is utterly reckless as to how he treats it: he will lie upon the grass in it; and he wore it a great deal while he was making those bookshelves for you, and messing about generally in the carpenter's room of an evening."
"Mrs. Doidge has fine-drawn the hole in the knee where the chisel went through, sir," murmured Miles, as he offered his young master the vegetables, with deferential bend, "and I brushed and laid everything out upon your bed, sir, as usual."
"Thank you, Miles; yes, I saw that," Teddie rejoined. "Well, they will be all the readier. I am afraid I shall be wearing them very soon: something tells me that it won't be long before Hugh comes," he added, turning to Hazel.
Good, faithful Miles! With how much perseverance did he endeavour, in things great and small, to keep up his loved "family" to the level of their former status, deeming such condition essential to their well-being! With what toil and labour did he strive that each of his young masters should at all times appear well groomed, that they might not miss, nor show they lacked, the attentions of the two valets whose services had been entirely devoted to his five sons, by Hubert's order!
And indeed, as Miles himself was wont to confess, if it were not for the saving help of their faithful servant, long ere this would the young gentlemen have presented themselves at dinner in morning dress, to be tended by a couple of maids—Miles always lost his equanimity at the mere thought of women at table. He shuddered to contemplate the probable condition of the plate and glass, that constituted his greatest pride, under feminine control.
He would look into the drawing-room or search the hall—either of which places were gathering grounds of the family—a few minutes before the sounding of the dinner-gong, and if one luckless Le Mesurier boy chanced to be lurking in some corner, in morning garb, hoping to escape the watchful eye of the redoubted butler, Miles would immediately spy him out, and with bland severity inform the delinquent that he would ask Mrs. Doidge to "put the dinner back" a quarter of an hour, if his young master could find that sufficient time in which to make his toilet. His patient persistence at length shamed the boys into meek acquiescence, so that Miles had relaxed his stern vigilance somewhat of late, showing in its stead a pathetic trust in their own sense of right, such as they could not disregard.
The flower-garden too, in the immediate neighbourhood of the house, would be overrun with weeds—as he had once found it after a month's confinement to the house with an obstinate attack of rheumatism—entailing the extra expense of outside help for their suppression. It is true that Miss Hazel had wrestled with the noxious growths—as her little brown hands testified, for she either could not or would not keep on the queerly fashioned and enormous gloves that Mrs. Doidge assured the girl were the correct thing for gardening, and with which the good woman was careful to supply her; but what was his little mistress's feeble strength, pitted against the alarming odds of the pertinacious herbage? Miles asked pitifully, when even he, tough, work-hardened old man that he was, found the fight a fierce and oft-to-be-repeated one: for the foe, fresh and smiling in their green uniform, seemed to bear charmed lives, and to rise in formidable ranks like so many phoenixes from the weed carnage. Extermination seemed an impossibility, notwithstanding the feverish energy with which Miles went forth to combat, and the wondrous strategy that he brought to bear upon the imposing and ever-smiling green army.
CHAPTER III
Two days later, Teddie and Hazel, she seated on far-stretching, hopelessly tangled tree-roots, he prone upon his back on the dry moss, disported themselves in the leafy shade of the beloved greenwood, deep in consultation on the same momentous question that Hazel had endeavoured to solve alone: how might she earn money?