'Oh, it's no good thinking of it now,' he answered. 'I was only going to say—forgetting—that if Geordie and Ida liked I might buy it and add it on to the hut. It would make into two capital little bedrooms for very little cost, and Lloyd happened to say to-day that the makers would rather sell it for less where it stands than have the expense of taking it back to London. They keep improving these things; it is probably considered old-fashioned already.'
Geordie and I looked at each other. How lovely it would have been! Just what we had always longed for—to be allowed really to live at the hut now and then. And with two more rooms we could have had Hoskins with us, and then mamma wouldn't have been nervous about it. But as papa said, there was no use in thinking about it now.
'Will the people who are coming to live here have the hut too?' I asked.
Papa did not seem to pay much attention to what I said. He was thinking deeply, and almost started as I turned to him with the question.
'I do not know,' he replied. 'It has not been alluded to.'
'I hope not,' said mamma. 'If we stay at Kirke, as I still trust we may, it would be nice to come up there to spend an afternoon now and then. It is so far from the house that we would not seem like intruders. Though, of course, once they see how nice it is, they may want to have it as a bathing-box.'
'That's not very likely,' said papa. 'They seem elderly people, and the son is a great sufferer from rheumatism. That is why they have taken such a fancy to this place—the scent of pine woods and the air about them are considered so good for illnesses of that kind. And sea-air suits him too, and they think it a wonderful chance to have all this as well as a dry climate and fairly mild winters. Yes—we who live here are uncommonly lucky.'
He strolled to the window as he spoke and stood looking out without speaking. Then he turned again.
'I'll remember about the hut,' he said. 'I don't fancy these good people would be likely to be fussy or ill-natured or to think you intruding. Their letters are so well-bred and considerate.'
We felt glad to hear that.