A Sovereign Remedy

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

Ted blushed a little this time. "I--I--am not employed by the firm any longer, Lord Blackborough," he said hurriedly; "You have been away--besides, a clerk on a hundred and fifty would hardly come to your ears. But the fact is that--that Mr. Hirsch offered me three hundred."

Ned Blackborough's face took on an expression of amusement. "I begin to understand. So you are on the high road to opulence! Now I wonder why he did that?--you shall tell me in the train--11.50--for I must be off, as I've some business to get through before closing-time."

The business appeared to amuse him also, for the expression did not fade from his face as he drove to the Public Library, hunted up a book on Wales, then drove to a house-agent's and gave an order, and finally stopped at those general entrepreneurs, Williams and Edwards, and gave another. Myfanwy Jones, catching sight of him on his way to the senior partner's office, volunteered a remark to the buyer in her department that she knew that fellow, had seen him down at her father's, and was crushed by the reply: "Him! Why, he is Lord Blackborough--the richest peer in England."

She brazened it out by saying "Get along"; but as a matter of fact Ned was repeating much the same information in the office. "I am Lord Blackborough," he was saying, "you need spare no expense. Only see that everything is well done."

The words had a marvellous dynamic power, setting telegraphic wires and express vans and confidential clerks in motion. The result being that when Ned and Ted, who had travelled down third class together in very friendly fashion got out at the station nearest to Dinas there were two very smart motors cars awaiting them.

"If you will excuse me for a moment," said Lord Blackborough to his companion, "I'll just see my cousin, Mrs. Tressilian--you remember her of course--off for Plas Afon. I've taken it for three weeks and Ramsay and some other people are coming down, so we ought to have a good time. Then I can take you round in the Panhard to Cwmfairnog. It will only make a difference of a mile or two, for Plas Afon, is just the other side of Dinas, you know."

Ted waiting on the platform while Helen, another lady, and a maid were stowed away in the covered car, began to realise that Ned was not going to forgo a single advantage. It was to be check and counter-check on both sides. It had been quick work, and to get hold of Plas Afon--the show place of the neighbourhood--must have needed money indeed! Some day he would be able to do that sort of thing if he chose. But he would not choose. He would never be such a reckless devil as Blackborough. Yet he could not help admiring the go and fire of the fellow!

"So you are going to play the prince over me," he said when they had settled comfortably down under a priceless fox-skin rug and Ned was sending the motor up the hill full speed.

Lord Blackborough laughed. "Not at all! I had to check your move somehow. I couldn't go--as you go--to Mahomet, so I had to try and induce Mahomet to come to me. You will decline my invitations, no doubt, but I shall have done my best. Personally," he added. "I would much rather have stuck to the old plan. Anyhow we won't defile Cwmfairnog with the smell of petrol. We'll leave the motor at the bridge--you can send for your things afterwards--and walk up. Ye Gods! How beautiful this country is in winter."

It was, indeed. The hills lay so still, so soft beneath the pale-blue wintry sky, the distant ones greyly transparent, the near ones showing rounded, red-brown bracken-covered lights against rounded, misty, violet shadows. The very frost rime on each leaf, each blade of grass, looked soft, and the gold of the slanting sunlight seemed to warm the very icicles which drooped from the high moss-covered, fern-clad banks showing where some trickle of water dropped from the hillside above. But it was up the wooded ravines where the bare branches of the oak scrub followed each curving contour that the ineffable hues of blent shadows and shine showed to their fullest. They were valleys of perfect rest, deep blue in their depths, jasper, jewelled with crystals on their heights.