Valiant’s laugh rang out over the lake—to be answered by a sudden sharp screech from the terrace, where the peacock strutted, a blaze of spangled purple and gold. They turned to see Aunt Daphne issue from the kitchen, twig-broom in hand.
“Heah!” she exclaimed. “What fo’ yo’ kyahin’ on like er wil’ gyraff we’n we got comp’ny, yo’ triflin’ ol’ fan-tail, yo’! Git outen heah!” She waved her weapon and the bird, with a raucous shriek of defiance, retired in ruffled disorder. The master of Damory Court looked at Shirley. “What shall we name him?”
“I’d call him Fire-Cracker if he goes off like that,” she said. And Fire-Cracker the bird was christened forthwith.
“And now,” said Shirley, “let’s set out the ramblers.”
The major had brought a rough plan, sketched from memory, of the old arrangement of the formal garden. “I’ll just go over the lines of the beds with Unc’ Jefferson,” he proposed, “while you two potter over these roses.” So Valiant and Shirley walked back up the slope beneath the pergola together. The sun was westering fast, and long lilac cloud-trails lay over the terraces. But the bumbling bees were still busy in the honeysuckle and hawking dragon-flies shot hither and thither. A robin was tilting on the rim of the fountain and it looked at them with head turned sidewise, with a low sweet pip that mingled with the trickling laugh of the falling water.
With Ranston puffing and blowing like a black porpoise over his creaking go-cart, they planted the ramblers—crimson and pink and white—Valiant much of the time on his knees, his hands plunging deep into the black spongy earth, and Shirley with broad hat flung on the grass, her fingers separating the clinging thread-like roots and her small arched foot tamping down the soil about them. Her hair—the color of wet raw wood in the sunlight—was very near the brown head and sometimes their fingers touched over the work. Once, as they stood up, flushed with the exercise, a great black and orange butterfly, dazed with the sun-glow, alighted on Valiant’s rolled-up sleeve. He held his arm perfectly still and blew gently on the wavering pinions till it swam away. When a redbird flirted by, to his delight she whistled its call so perfectly that it wheeled in mid-flight and tilted inquiringly back toward them.
As they descended the terrace again to the pergola, he said, “There’s only one thing lacking at Damory Court—a sun-dial.”
“Then you haven’t found it?” she cried delightedly. “Come and let me show you.”
She led the way through the maze of beds at one side till they reached a hedge laced thickly with Virginia creeper. He parted this leafy screen, bending back the springing fronds that thrust against the flimsy muslin of her gown and threatened to spear the pink-rosed hat that cast an adorable warm tint over her creamy face, thinking that never had the old place seen such a picture as she made framed in the deep green.