“Yes,” he replied, “hence my intimate acquaintance with the library, and the short cut down the Laurel Walk. This is one of the jolliest rooms in the house, and you see I’ve got all my own belongings here already. And you don’t know all its attractions yet! There is a hidden door in the corner here too, opening on to a private staircase up to a couple of capital rooms—bedroom and dressing-room—which I’ve taken possession of. They communicate as well with the main part of the house, where all your rooms are. But it is jolly, isn’t it? I don’t believe Ryder has any idea how comfortable this old place might be.”
He seemed as pleased as any school-boy with his new quarters; and Madeleine, on her side, was girl enough to enter into the little excitement in connection with their temporary home with equal zest. She insisted on following her brother up the little staircase to see his other rooms, then down passages and across landings to the main staircase, down which they came again to visit the drawing-rooms. Of these there were two, on the whole the most attractive rooms on the ground floor, for they had windows on both sides, and though their furniture was somewhat scanty and quaint, and there was naturally an air of unusedness about them, Madeleine’s quick eye soon decided that with a little rearrangement, some high-growing plants and ferns here and there, books, photographs, and so on, it would be easy to give them a homelike and gracious aspect.
“I thought,” said Horace, “that mother could probably use the smaller one as a sort of boudoir, and if you want a den of your own, Maddie, there’s rather a nice little corner room close to where you are, upstairs. A plainly furnished little place, as you prefer, I know, for your various avocations, which don’t always find favour in the maternal eye.”
Madeleine laughed.
“Show it to me,” she said. And upstairs again they went. The little room was greatly approved of. “Yes,” agreed Madeleine, “it is just what I like. Not so very little, after all—large enough to have a friend or two at tea privately. You must hunt me up a few more chairs and a sofa from somewhere. Yes, this room is a capital idea. I can bring in any botanical spoils, or cut out my poor work, without fear of annoying mamma by my untidiness.”
“You are very untidy, you know,” said Horace, who had all a soldier’s precision and orderliness. “I don’t mean in your dress, of course, but I do sometimes sympathise with mother.”
“Oh, don’t preach, Horace!” answered his sister, for her untidiness was an old story. “By-the-by, are there any poor people about here?”
“Scarcely any in the place itself,” said Horace. “But there is a queer fishing village not far off, the old vicar tells me, full of attraction for the artistic as well as the philanthropic. The people keep very much to themselves, and are delightfully picturesque, awfully dirty, and generally barbaric.”
“Why doesn’t he look after them, then?” said Madeleine rather sharply.
“Poor old chap,” answered Horace, “he can’t. He would if he could, even though it isn’t his business. But he has plenty of work in his own parish, even though there’s very little actual poverty.”