“But we were going out to look at your father’s place.”
“Well, that is father’s place.”
Peer stared at her face and let go the reins. “What? What? You don’t mean to say your father owns that place there?”
A few minutes later they were strolling through the great, low-ceiled rooms. The whole house was empty now, the farm-bailiff living in the servants’ quarters. Peer grew more and more enthusiastic. Here, in these great rooms, there had been festive gatherings enough in the days of the old Governors, where cavaliers in uniform or with elegant shirt-frills and golden spurs had kissed the hands of ladies in sweeping silk robes. Old mahogany, pot-pourri, convivial song, wit, grace—Peer saw it all in his mind’s eye, and again and again he had to give vent to his feelings by seizing Merle and embracing her.
“Oh, but look here, Merle—you know, this is a fairy-tale.”
They passed out into the old neglected garden with its grass-grown paths and well-filled carp-ponds and tumble-down pavilions. Peer rushed about it in all directions. Here, too, there had been fetes, with coloured lamps festooned around, and couples whispering in the shade of every bush. “Merle, did you say your father was going to sell all this to the State?”
“Yes, that’s what it will come to, I expect,” she answered. “The place doesn’t pay, he says, when he can’t live here himself to look after it.”
“But what use can the State make of it?”
“Oh, a Home for Imbeciles, I believe.”
“Good Lord! I might have guessed it! An idiot asylum—to be sure.” He tramped about, fairly jumping with excitement. “Merle, look here—will you come and live here?”