With Mary the tom-boy child, with Mary the long-legged flapper and good chum, he was affectionately at his ease. He had petted and tormented her by turns, ever since as a boy of ten he had first seen her, a baby a year old, in his Aunt Marjory's arms. Throughout her turbulent but very cheerful childhood he had been her firm, if patronising, friend. Then as she developed into what Ger had described to Eloquent as "a bit of a gawk," he became more than ever her friend and champion. "Uncle Hilary was so beastly down on Mary;" and Mary, though she did knock things over and say quite extraordinarily stupid things on occasion, was "such a good old sort."
He had never considered the question of her appearance till this Christmas. He supposed she was good-looking—all the Ffolliots were good-looking—but it really didn't matter much one way or another. She was part of Redmarley, and Redmarley as a whole counted for a good deal in Reginald Peel's life. He, too, had fallen under its mysterious charm. The manor-house mothered him, and the little Cotswold village cradled him in kindly keeping arms. His own mother had died when he was seven, his father married again a couple of years later; but, as Mr Peel was in the Indian Forest Department, and Reggie's young stepmother a faithful and devoted wife, he saw little of either of them, except on their somewhat infrequent leaves when they paid so many visits and had to see so many people, that he never really got to know either them or his half-brother and sister.
The love of Redmarley had grown with his growth till it became part of him; so far he had looked upon Mary as merely one of the many pleasant circumstances that went to the making of Redmarley. Now, somehow, she seemed to have detached herself from the general design and to have taken the centre of the picture. He was not sure that he approved of such prominence.
She startled him that first evening when, with the others, she met him in the hall. She was unexpected, she was different, and he hated that anything at Redmarley should be different.
"Mary's grown up since yesterday," Uz remarked ironically, "she's like you when you first managed to pull your moustache."
Of course Reggie suitably chastised Uz for his cheek, but all the same there was a difference.
To be sure she still wore her skirts well above her ankles, but nowadays quite elderly ladies wore short skirts, so that in no way accentuated her youth; and after all was she so very young?
Mary would be eighteen on Valentine's day.
Arrayed in Elizabethan doublet and hose for Lady Campion's dance, Reggie stood before his looking-glass and grinned at himself sardonically.
"Ugly devil," he called himself, and then wondered how Mary would look as Phyllida the ideal milkmaid.