She nodded. "Yes! The organ that hasn't sounded a note for ever so long, played of itself, or rather Griffiths Morgan, the sexton, says he was awoke by the Archangel Gabriel."
"Nonsense," interrupted Ned with spirit, "it--it couldn't have been----"
"That is what Adam says," replied Aurelia smiling. "Adam! tell the story yourself."
"'Twain't much story, Miss Aura," put in the old gardener, "but 'twas how as this. Rector he bin preechin' of the roarin', rushin' wynd, an' as he coombed down the chauntrey steps, as might be the Pope o' Rome with that there brass platter, it let loose quite suddint. A wynd, indeed, a rushin' and roarin', an' heavenly notes all a-dyin' away to twanks like the last Trump. Folks were greatly put about, even passon himself didn't know what to make on't till Griffiths Morgan, as sleeps on the beller's 'andle through being accustomed to it as a lad, said he was woke and bid blow by the Archangel Gabriel. Whereupon passon give it 'im for sleepin', and says as he must a' laid on the notes somehow; but I says, says I, that nothin' but true miracle 'ud ever make the broken-wynded old orgin' give out sech a rare 'ollerin'."
"But there's no such thing as a miracle, Adam," declared the girl, and the next moment was on her knees peering into an aster patch. "Why, there it is," she cried, "Oh! Adam, how could you?"
Adam stooped over the border in simulated astonishment.
"Why, drat my garters" (this was his most extreme form of words). "So be it. Well, miss, 'tis true miracle how that pr'anniel stuff comes up, libel or no. 'Tis the Lord's doings, as don't call 'em by name, see you."
"But Adam did," said Ned, relieved as the necessity for confessing that he was not the Archangel Gabriel vanished before this change of venue.
"What Adam?" asked Aura. "Oh! I suppose you mean the one in the Bible, only grandfather doesn't believe in it, you know. It couldn't, anyhow, be this one," she continued, her eyes shining with laughter once more as they moved across the lawn, leaving Adam shaking his head over the Ourisia coccinea, "for when he digs my borders he begins by collecting all the tallies into a heap; then he puts them back again at regular intervals in a row. It's very funny, you know, but terribly confusing. Each spring I have to rack my brains to think what each dear thing means as it peeps up. Of course, that is interesting in itself, but"--here her eyes grew clearer, lighter as she looked up for sympathy--"it is rather sad to make mistakes. I don't like dreaming a campanula is white when it is blue, blue when it is white."
"I think one is as beautiful as the other," laughed Ted.