“Yes, dear,” I responded drily; “but you remember that the rent was for the month, and you paid her two pounds five shillings for the week.”
All the rest of that day Francesca was angelic. She brought footstools for Salemina, wound wool for her, insisted upon washing my paint brushes, read aloud to us while we were working, and offered to be the one to discharge Benella if the awful moment for that surgical operation should ever come. Finally, just as we were about to separate for the night, she said, with insinuating sweetness, “You won't tell Ronald about my mistake with the rent-money, will you, dearest and darlingest girls?”
We are now quite ready to join in all the gaieties that may ensue when Rosnaree welcomes its master and his guests. Our page in buttons at the lodge gives Benella full scope for her administrative ability, which seems to have sprung into being since she entered our service; at least, if I except that evidence of it which she displayed in managing us when first we met. She calls our page 'the Button Boy,' and makes his life a burden to him by taking him away from his easy duties at the gate, covering his livery with baggy overalls, and setting him to weed the garden. It can never, in the nature of things, be made free from weeds during our brief term of tenancy, but Benella cleverly keeps her slave at work on the beds and the walks that are the most conspicuous to visitors. The Old Hall used simply to be called 'Aunt David's house' by the Welsh Joyces, and it was Aunt David herself who made the garden; she who traced the lines of the flower-beds with the ivory tip of her parasol; she who planned the quaint stone gateways and arbours and hedge seats; she who devised the interminable stretches of paths, the labyrinthine walks, the mazes, and the hidden flower-plots. You walk on and on between high hedges, until, if you have not missed your way, you presently find a little pansy or rose or lily garden. It is quite the most unexpected and piquant method of laying out a place I have ever seen; and the only difficulty about it is that any gardener, unless he were possessed of unusual sense of direction, would be continually astray in it. The Button Boy, obeying the laws of human nature, is lost in two minutes, but requires two hours in which to find himself. Benella suspects that he prefers this wandering to and fro to the more monotonous task of weeding, and it is no uncommon thing for her to pursue the recalcitrant page through the mazes and labyrinths for an hour at a time, and perhaps lose herself in the end. Salemina and I were sitting this morning in the Peacock Walk, where two trees clipped into the shape of long-tailed birds mount guard over the box hedge, and put their beaks together to form an arch. In the dim distance we could see Benella 'bagging' the Button Boy, and, after putting the trowel and rake in his reluctant hands, tying the free end of a ball of string to his leg, and sending him to find and weed the pansy garden. We laughed until the echoes rang, to see him depart, dragging his lengthening chain, or his Ariadne thread, behind him, while Benella grimly held the ball, determined that no excuses or apologies should interfere with his work on this occasion.
Chapter XXVIII. Round towers and reflections.
'On Lough Neagh's banks, as the fisherman strays,
When the cool, calm eve's declining.
He sees the round towers of other days
Beneath the waters shining.'
Thomas Moore.
A Dublin car-driver told me one day that he had just taken a picnic-party to the borders of a lake, where they had had tea in a tramcar which had been placed there for such purposes. Francesca and I were amused at the idea, but did not think of it again until we drove through the La Touche estate, on one of the first days after our arrival at Devorgilla. We left Salemina at Rosnaree House with Aunt La Touche and the children, and proceeded to explore the grounds, with the view of deciding on certain improvements to be made when the property passes, so to speak, into our hands.
Truth to say, nature has done more for it than we could have done; and if it is a trifle overgrown and rough and rank, it could hardly be more beautiful. At the very furthest confines of the demesne there is a brook,—large enough, indeed, to be called a river here, where they have no Mississippi to dwarf all other streams and serve as an impossible standard of comparison. Tall trees droop over the calm water, and on its margins grow spearwort, opening its big yellow cups to the sunshine, meadow rue, purple and yellow loosestrife, bog bean, and sweet flag. Here and there float upon the surface the round leaves and delicate white blossoms of the frogbit, together with lilies, pondweeds, and water starworts.
“What an idyllic place to sit and read, or sew, or have tea!” exclaimed Francesca.
“What a place for a tram tea-house!” I added. “Do you suppose we could manage it as a surprise to Dr. La Touche, in return for all his kindness?”