"We breakfast in the verandah," said Aurelia, turning to the left into a large low-roofed room, lined from floor to ceiling with books, but containing no other furniture save a chair and a writing-table.
The glimpse afforded by the open hall-door showed them that Ted's surmise had been correct. They were on an island, for to the right of the garden a stream, after dashing over some rocks, disappeared behind the high wall enclosing the orchard which filled up the end of the valley, while, as they passed on through the book room, a lawn lay before them sloping down to a deep, still pool, a pool shadowed by surely the biggest yew-tree they had ever seen. Its great arms spread themselves out, and, bowed to earth by their own weight, found a fresh foothold for another upward spring, until the one tree seemed a grove.
Here in a sunny square formed by the joining of house and steading walls, they found a breakfast-table, and beside it, in an arm-chair, an old man with a thin face and Florentine-cut, silver-white hair.
"Excuse my rising, gentlemen," he said in a high, suave voice, his nervous hands gripping the chair-arms in rather a helpless fashion, "but I am somewhat--more or less--of a cripple at times--I suffer from rheumatism, and last night's rain----"
"Might have made us rheumatic also but for your kindness," began Ned politely.
"Not at all! Not at all--Martha does all that sort of thing well--an excellent creature--really an excellent creature, but alas! quite devoid of intelligence," said their host, and his large, restless, pale blue eyes which, from the smallness of his other features, dominated his face, took on a remonstrant expression that was curiously obstinate yet weak. "Yes!" he continued, "absolutely devoid of brains. One of those hewers of wood and drawers of water by desire and determination who stand so--so infernally--in the way of true socialistic development. But, by the way I am forgetting to introduce myself. I am Sylvanus Smith, President--but stay----! Aurelia, my child, fetch the Syllabus of the Socialistic Congress from my writing-table; that will be the best introduction. And here comes Martha with, I presume, breakfast. We generally have a parlourmaid, but"--the remonstrant expression came to his face again--"Martha is somewhat hard on maids. She--she doesn't believe in perfect freedom of soul and body, so the last left yesterday in--in a flame of fire! The young men of the village----"
Ned laughed. "We know about that, sir; we were taken last night for 'lazy good-for-nothin' Welsh libertynes.'"
Mr. Sylvanus Smith appeared shocked. "I really must speak to Martha," he said in an undertone, adding aloud, "Well, Martha, what have you there?"
The question was provoked by the setting down of a silver dish among the fruits, nuts, and other vegetarian diets on the table, and there was a certain tremulous authority in it.
The subservience of Martha's bob was phenomenal.