"Mother says that the house is always open to you," the girl replied in her gracious little way.
Having completed her task, she gave the flowers into Paul's eager keeping, and proceeded to lead the way through the shady tracks of Hazelhurst wood, her brothers affecting to breathe again as they safely went by the great oak-tree with Hazel still in their midst; albeit she had cast a lingering look up into its leafy shade, in passing.
As the significance of the long-drawn sighs caught Hazel's understanding, she faced them swiftly, and still keeping step with the four, danced along backwards, the better to explain away their groundless fears.
Paul thought he had never seen anything so pretty.
"I never climb trees when I am wearing my white dress," she said remonstrantly. "It is the one thing that makes Mrs. Doidge really cross. She says it takes Mattie two hours, every time, to get it up." And Hazel looked down at her simple muslin frock with some pride, in that it should prove to be so important a factor in the weekly routine of domestic labour. Having duly impressed her hearers, the girl faced about and continued the unbroken march in silence, with pretty, swinging motion, all her own.
Presently the booming of a gong came to them on the still air.
"By the way," Gerald said, of a sudden oppressed with his quick transition from guest to host, "you will forgive any shortcomings in the meal, won't you, Charteris? It is of no use attempting to disguise the fact that we are living—well, extremely simply, just now."
"You will be all right, Charteris," Teddie chimed in comfortably. "You are fed by old Miles on roast mutton and rice pudding with such a tremendous amount of ceremony that you are quite deceived into thinking you are in for a royal feast. And, after all, you can always eat up your own dainties when you get back to your place."
"Talking of Miles's impressive ways," Hugh said presently, "the mater had to speak to him once—he was actually serving cabbage round as a separate course, as if it were asparagus or artichokes. Oh, and by the way," he added, "I should advise you not to accept the coloured fluid he offers. No one knows what it is."
Thus warned at all points, the guest was ushered into the presence of Mrs. Le Mesurier. The party soon adjourned to the dining-room, where the fare, if simple, was most excellently cooked and daintily served, and Paul found the refined simplicity very much to his taste, vowing within himself that, with all his wealth, he would for the future practise such simplicity himself: in truth, he was inclined to think the thing could not be overdone. The trouble would be to make his housekeeper and butler view the case in like light—people of their class thought so much of pomp and show. Oh, well, let them be, but he would have his own way when entertaining company.