"It was my bairn!" said McNare. "It was the apple o' my eye! I'd gi'ed it a year and more's care." He drew the back of one horny hand across his eyes.
"McNare!" cried David contritely.
Bab turned away as David impulsively put a hand on the old gardener's shoulder. That was like David. He would not for the world have hurt another.
A shadow seemed to have fallen on his spirit when he rejoined her. He was repressed, less eager, less animatedly talkative. He pointed to the flower in her hand.
"You don't want that, Bab," he said suddenly. "Throw it away."
Throw away the blossom which before the calamity McNare had said was priceless! Bab hesitated, but David insisted on it.
"It's blighted, Bab. You mustn't have about you anything that isn't all suggestive of happiness. Not today certainly, and never if I can help it."
She gazed at him with softened, thoughtful eyes. It was some time before David regained his spirits. From the greenhouses he took her through Byewolde's stables, past rows of stalls and boxes where a dozen or more tenants lived in pampered luxury. The coachman, a ruddy-faced, beefy gentleman of the old school, kicked a foot out behind him as he touched his hat to David and Bab. He, too, like McNare, was an old-time servitor in that house; and with a bustling anxiety to serve and to please he kept the three stable grooms on the jump, parading his charges before the visitors. The sleek, satiny-coated animals—cobs, coach horses, and finally a pair of thoroughbred hunters—Bab could have admired interminably. Just then, however, a bell in the near-by farm began to clang.
"One o'clock," David announced. "Crabbe will worry unless we make haste!"
So Bab regretfully climbed back into the motor. A moment later they dashed up under the high Doric portico again. She and David lunched alone. In the big, low-ceiled dining-room, rich with its hangings and its paneling of mahogany, bright with the array of silver and cut glass on table and sideboard, Crabbe served them with soft-footed, silent deference. At the end of the room the French windows stood open, and from her place at the head of the table, ensconced behind the massive Beeston tea service, Bab looked out, first on a long stretch of velvety lawn, then at its background, the wall of evergreens that guarded the sunken garden. The sunlight of that perfect day still shone upon it. Allured by all this, she sat gazing on the prospect dreamy-eyed. How delightful it all was! How splendid! And to think that once, a few months before, she had been a nobody, a little waif in a boarding house! Bab herself hardly could believe it. A deep breath escaped her.