How lightly his feet mounted the steep garden path between the trim box borders! There were plenty of flowers in the garden now—sweet-smelling hyacinths, vivid scarlet tulips with wide open chalices, half full of rain; a snowy mesphilus flinging about its frail white blooms in the soft west wind; a crimson rhododendron making a blaze of colour.
The long, low cottage, with its massive porch, was covered with flowering creepers, yellow jasmine, pale pink japonica, scented white honeysuckle. The cottage looked like a bower, and seemed to smile at him as he went up the path. He had a childish fancy that he would rather live in that cottage with Eve for his wife than at Merewood, which was one of the prettiest and most convenient houses of moderate size in all Hampshire. What dwelling could ever be so dear as this quaint old cottage, bent under the burden of its disproportionate thatch, with lattice windows peeping out at odd levels, and with dormers like gigantic eyes under penthouse lids?
She was at home; everybody was at home, even that undomestic bird, the Colonel. They were all at tea in their one spacious parlour—windows open, and all the perfume of flowers and growing hedgerows and budding trees blowing into the room.
Colonel Marchant welcomed him with marked cordiality. The girls were evidently pleased at his coming.
“How good of you to call on us on your way from the station!” said Sophy. “Lady Hartley told us you were to be met by the afternoon train.”
Lo, a miracle! The five Miss Marchants were all dressed alike—severely, in darkest blue serge. The red Garibaldis, the yellow and brown stripes, the scarlet, the magenta, the Reckitt’s blue, which had made their sitting-room a battle-field of crude colours, had all vanished. In darkest serge, with neat white linen collars, the Miss Marchants stood before him, a family to whose attire the severest taste could not object.
Eve was the most silent of the sisters, but she had blushed vividly at his advent, and she was blushing still. She blushed at every word he addressed to her, and seemed to find a painful difficulty in handling the teapot and cups and saucers when she resumed her post at the tea-tray.
Vansittart asked them for the news of the neighbourhood. How had they managed to amuse themselves after the frost, when there was no more skating?
“We were awfully sorry,” said Sophy, “but the hunting men were awfully glad.”
“And had you any more balls?”