Volume One—Chapter Eleven.
In a Mist.
Glynne Day was seated in her favourite place—a bright, cheerful-looking room connected with her bedchamber on the first floor at Brackley, and turned by her into a pleasant nest; for the French windows opened into a tiny conservatory over a broad bay window of the dining-room, where were displayed the choicest floral gems that Jones, the head gardener, could raise, all being duly tended by her own hands.
The gardener shook his head, and said that “the plahnts wiltered” for want of light, and wanted to cut away the greater part of the tendril-like stems of the huge wistaria, which twisted itself into cables, and formed loops and sprays all over the top glass; but Glynne looked at him in horror, and forbade him to cut a stem. Consequently, in the spring-time, great lavender racemes of the lovely flowers clustered about the broad window at which the mistress of the Hall loved to sit and sketch “bits” of the beautiful landscape around, and make study after study of the precipitous pine-crowned hill a mile away, behind whose dark trees the sun would set, and give her opportunities to paint in gorgeous hues the tints of the western sky.
Here Lucy Alleyne would be brought after their walks, to sit and read, while Glynne filled in sketches she had made; and many a pleasant hour was passed by the two girls, while the soft breezes of the sunny country waved the long wistaria strands.
“It’s no use for me to speak, Mr Morris,” said the gardener one day. “It ’most breaks my heart, for all about there, and under the little glass house is the untidiest bit about my garden. I told Sir John about it, and he said, ‘Why don’t you cut it then, booby?’ and when I told him why, and ast him to speak to Miss Glynne, he said, ‘Be off, and leave it alone.’”
“And of course you did,” said Morris, the butler.
“Sack’s the word if I hadn’t, sir. But you mark my words: one of these days—I mean nights—them London burglars ’ll give us a visit, and they won’t want no ladder to get up to the first-floor windows. A baby could climb up them great glycene ropes and get in at that window; and then away goes my young lady’s jewels.”
“Well, they won’t get my plate,” said Morris with a chuckle. “I’ve two loaded pistols in my pantry for anyone who comes, so let ’em look out; and if I shout for help, the major’s got his loaded too.”