Certainly Peggy had grown into a very pretty girl, but it was a thousand pities that she had not yet outgrown the eccentricities of her youth.
Chapter Eleven.
When Peggy had been staying a week at the vicarage, her parents came down from town on a two days’ visit, especially arranged to give them an opportunity of looking over Yew Hedge. Colonel Saville’s scant supply of patience was fast giving out beneath the strain of disappointment, and he declared his intention of buying the first habitable house he saw, while his wife and daughter were reluctantly forced to the conclusion that it was impossible to procure an ancestral estate at the price of a suburban villa. Yew Hedge, therefore, appeared the refuge of the destitute, and a fly being hired from the village inn, and Mrs Asplin invited to take the fourth seat, the little party drove off to inspect the house in mingled hope and fear.
The thick hedge which gave the name to the house skirted the country road for some hundreds of yards, while a carriage drive of commonplace propriety led up to a square stone house, which could by no possibility have been termed either beautiful or picturesque. Mrs Saville’s face fell into an expression of martyr-like despair, and the colonel looked fierce and frowning; but, like many good things, and people also, Yew Hedge showed its worst points on the surface, and modestly hid its Virtues out of sight. There was a large flower and vegetable garden behind the house, the entrance hall was roomy with an old-fashioned fireplace in the corner, the drawing-room contained an abundance of those nooks and corners beloved of modern decorators, and Peggy fairly capered about with exultation when she entered the dining-room and beheld panelled oak walls and a frescoed ceiling.
“Father, it’s settled! We take this house on the spot. These walls decide it. Think how inspiring it will be to live our lives against a background of carved oak!” she cried in a rapture, and the colonel tugged at his moustache with a smile of complacent satisfaction.
“Looks about right, Peg, doesn’t it? That Indian furniture would look well in here, and the old delf. We’ll put all the delf here, I fancy, and—”
“And have blue walls in the drawing-room—blue paper and white wood, and a touch of yellow in the draperies. I saw some brocade at Liberty’s which would be the very thing!” chimed in his wife, while Mrs Asplin gasped and looked askance at the extraordinary trio who began to discuss the furnishings of a house before they had even ascended the staircase. She coughed in a deprecatory manner, and said:
“The reception rooms are certainly fine—they have always been considered the strong point of the house, but the bedroom accommodation is not nearly so good. There are fewer rooms than you would expect, and they are mostly small. I’m afraid you will be disappointed when you see them.”