The stables were built much higher up than the house, close to the road, but surrounded by trees. I had never been near them before; but now I followed Mona close underneath the walls, where she began dancing about by herself, making hideous grimaces at two windows on the upper story, and throwing up at them little stones and bits of stick that she picked up, all wet and muddy, from the moist earth. I seized and caught her up in my arms so suddenly that for the first few moments she was too much surprised to howl; but I had scarcely turned to take her back to the house when she recovered her powers completely, and made the plantation ring with a most elfish yell. I spoke to her and tried to reason with her, and told her it was all for her good, when one of the upper windows I have mentioned was thrown open, and Mr. Rayner appeared at it.
“Hallo, what is the matter? Kidnapping, Miss Christie?”
“Oh, Mr. Rayner, she will sit in the mud and open her mouth to catch the rain without a hat, and it can’t be good for her!” I said piteously.
“Never mind. It doesn’t seem to hurt her. I believe she is half a frog,” said her father, with less tenderness than he might have shown, I thought.
For the child was not old enough to know that it was wrong to dislike her father, while he was quite old enough to know that it was wrong not to be fonder of his child.
“But you will get your own feet wet, my dear child,” said he, in quite a different tone. “Come up here and sit by the fire, while I fetch your goloshes. You have never seen my studio. I pass half my time painting and smoking here when it is wet and I can’t get out.” He had a palette on his thumb and a pipe in his mouth while he spoke. “You don’t mind the smell of turpentine or tobacco, do you?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Rayner! But I won’t come in, thank you. I am at lessons with Haidee,” said I.
“Happy Haidee! I wish I were young enough to take lessons; and yet, if I were, I shouldn’t be old enough to make the best use of my time,” said he, in a low voice, with mock-modesty that made me laugh.
He was leaning a long way out of window in the rain, and I had work to do indoors; so, without saying anything more, I returned to the house with my prize.
It was to his studio then that Sarah had taken his violin. I had never heard of this studio before; but I knew that Mr. Rayner was very careful about the condition of the stables, and I could imagine that this two-windowed upper room, with its fire, must be a very nice place to paint in—dry, warm, and light. Could this be where Mr. Rayner slept? No; for in that case he would hardly have asked me to come up and look at his painting. And I should not like to think that he had made for himself a snug warm little home here while his family slept in the damp vapors of the marsh at the bottom of the hill. But that would not be like Mr. Rayner, I thought, remembering the pains he had taken to provide a nice dry room just for me, the governess. Yet I should have liked, in the face of Mr. Reade’s tiresome suspicions, to be sure.