Mrs. Ellmer opened the door herself, thus disappointing me a little; Babiole's simple confidences, which I liked to think were the result not only of natural frankness, but of instinctive trust in me, were pleasanter to listen to than her mother's more artificial conversation. We were both very dignified, both ceremoniously grateful to each other, and when we entered the sitting-room and began to discuss preliminaries in a somewhat pompous and long-winded manner, Babiole sat, quiet as a mouse, in a corner, as if afraid to disturb by a breath the harmonious settlement of a plan on which she had set her heart.
At last all was arranged. It was now Monday; Mrs. Ellmer and her daughter were to hold themselves in readiness to enter into possession by the following Friday or Saturday, when I should return to Aberdeen to escort them to Larkhall Lodge. I rose to take my leave, not with the easy feeling of equality of the day before, but with deep humility, and repeated assurances of gratitude, to which Mrs. Ellmer replied with mild and dignified protest.
But, in the passage, Babiole danced lightly along to the door like a kitten, and holding up her finger as a sign to me to keep silence, she clapped her hands noiselessly and nodded to me several times in deliciously confiding freemasonry.
'I worked hard for it,' she said at last in a very soft whisper, her red lips forming the words carefully, near to my ear. 'Good-bye, Mr. Maude,' she then said aloud and demurely, but with her eyes dancing. And she gave my hand a warm squeeze as she shook it, and let me out into the nipping Scotch air in the gloom of the darkening afternoon, with a new and odd sense of a flash of brightness and warmth into the world.
Then I walked quickly along, devising by what means that cottage, which my guilty soul told me was bare of a single stick, could be furnished and habitable by Friday. And a cold chill crept through my bones as a new and hitherto unthought-of question thrust itself up in my mind:
What would Ferguson say?
CHAPTER VI
I made a hasty tour of the second-hand shops in Aberdeen, being wise enough to know that if she were to find the cottage too spick and span, Mrs. Ellmer would in a moment discover my pious fraud. Having got together in this way a very odd assortment of furniture, I was rather at a loss about kitchen utensils, when I was seized with the happy inspiration of buying a new set of them for my own service, and handing over those at present in use in my kitchen to Mrs. Ellmer. Not knowing much about these things, I had to buy in a wholesale fashion, more, I fancy, to the advantage of the seller than to my own. However, the business was got through somehow, the things were to be sent on the following day, and I sneaked back to Ballater by the 4.35 train, wondering how I should break the news to Ferguson, and wishing that by some impossible good luck the immaculate one might have committed in my absence some slight breach of discipline which would give me for once the superior position. If I could only find him drunk! But though second to none in his fondness for whiskey, nobody but himself could tell when he had had more than enough; so that hope was vain.