“That’s because you’re growing so fast, Peg,” said Vansittart’s cheery voice. “Growing girls are apt to be weak. I shall send you some port which will soon make you sit up straight.”
“You needn’t trouble,” said Peggy. “I could swim in port if I liked. Sir Hubert sent a lot for me—the finest old wine in his cellar—just because Lady Hartley happened to say I was growing too fast. And they have sent grapes, and game, and all sorts of delicious things from Redwold, only because I grow too fast. It’s a fine thing for all of us that I grow so fast—ain’t it, Eve?—for, of course, I can’t eat all the grapes or the game.”
Peggy looked from wife to husband, with a joyous laugh. She had red spots on her hollow cheeks, and her eyes were very bright. Vansittart heard the death-bell as he looked at her.
The sisters came trooping in, having seen the fly at the door and guessed its meaning. They were rapturous in their greetings, had worlds to say about themselves and their neighbours, and were more eager to talk of their own experiences than to hear about Eve’s Cornish wanderings.
“You should just see how the people suck up to us, now you are Lady Hartley’s sister-in-law,” said Hetty, and was immediately silenced for vulgarity, and to make way for her elder sisters.
Vansittart left them all clustered about Eve, and all talking together. He went out into the garden—the homely garden of shrubs and fruit and flowers and vegetables, garden which now wore its autumnal aspect of over-ripeness verging on decay, rosy-red tomatoes hanging low upon the fence, with flabby yellowing leaves, vegetable marrows grown out of knowledge, and cucumbers that prophesied bitterness, cabbage stumps, withering bean-stalks—a wilderness of fennel: everywhere the growth that presages the end of all growing, and the long winter death-sleep.
It was not to muse upon decaying Nature that Vansittart had come out among the rose and carnation borders, the patches of parsley and mint. He had a purpose in his sauntering, and made his way to the back of the straggling cottage, where the long-tiled roof of the kitchen and offices jutted out from under the thatch. Here through the open casement he saw Yorkshire Nancy bustling about in the bright little kitchen, her pupil and slave busy cleaning vegetables at the sink, and a shoulder of lamb slowly revolving before the ruddy coal fire—an honest, open fireplace. “None of your kitcheners for me,” Nancy was wont to say, with a scornful emphasis which recalled the fox in his condemnation of unattainable grapes.
Vansittart looked in at the window.
“May I have a few words with you, Nancy?” he asked politely.
“Lor, sir, how you did startle me to be sure. Sarah, look to lamb and put pastry to rise,” cried Nancy, whisking off her apron, and darting out to the garden. “You see, sir, you and Miss Eve have took us by surprise, and it’s as much as we shall have a bit of lunch ready for you at half-past one.”