"And they do say," Mary Ellen declared, "that he's no more fit to be wanderin' about the world alone than a babe unborn."
We smiled at the ignorance of women-servants, and speculated much on the Captain's probable new adventure. We were confident that he would return one day, loaded with fresh booty, and full of tales of the sea.
In the meantime, there was the Bishop. His house, as I have said stood between us and the Cathedral. It was a benign house, like a sleepy mastiff, and seemed to tolerate with lazy indifference the presence of its two narrow, high-backed neighbours, which with their cold, unblinking windows, looked like sinister, half-fed cats.
We had not been long at Mrs. Handsomebody's before we made friends with Bishop Torrance. As he walked in his deep, green garden, one morning, we three watched him enviously over the brick wall, that separated us. We were balanced precariously on a board, laid across the ash barrel, and The Seraph, losing his balance, fell headlong into a bed of clove pinks, almost at the Bishop's feet.
When his yells had subsided and explanations asked, and given, Angel and I were lifted over the wall, and shaken hands with, and given the freedom of the garden. We were introduced to the Bishop's niece, Margery, who was his sole companion, though we regarded, as one of the family, the Fountain Boy who blew cool jets of water through a shell, and turned his laughing face always upward toward the spires of the Cathedral.
Thus a quaint friendship sprang up, and, though the Bishop had not the dash, and boldness of Captain Pegg, he was an understanding and high-hearted playfellow.
I think The Seraph was his favourite. Even then, the dignified elegance of the Bishop's life appealed to that infant's love of the comfortable, and it tickled the Bishop immensely to have him pace solemnly up and down the garden, at his side, hands clasped behind his back, helping, as he believed, to "pwepare" the Bishop's sermon.
All three of us were permitted by Mrs. Handsomebody to join the Cathedral choir.
II
Thus we had a feeling of proprietorship in the Bishop and his garden, and his niece, Margery, and the Fountain Boy. Hence what was our astonishment and chagrin to see one morning, from our schoolroom window, a chit of a girl, smaller than myself, strutting up and down the Bishop's garden, pushing a doll's perambulator. She had fluffy golden hair about her shoulders, and her skirts gave a rhythmic swing as she turned the corners. Now and then she would stop in her walk, remove the covering from the doll, do some idiotic thing to it, and replace the cover with elaborate care.