"You are tired, my dear boy; pray lean on me," we heard her once say, propping him with her childish arm. "Sit down in the shade, you must not heat yourself;" but Dot rather resented her care of him, after the fashion of boys, but on the whole they suited each other perfectly.
In the evenings we always walked over the downs or drove with Miss Ruth in her pony carriage through the leafy lanes, or beside the yellow cornfields. The children used to gather large nosegays of poppies and cornflowers, and little pinky convolvuli. Sometimes we visited a farmhouse where some people lived whom Miss Ruth knew.
Once we stopped and had supper there, a homely meal of milk, and brown bread, and cream cheese, with a golden honeycomb to follow, which we ate in the farmyard kitchen. What an exquisite time we had there, sitting in the low window seat, looking over a bright clover field. A brood of little yellow chickens ran over the red-brick floor, a black retriever and her puppies lay before the fire—fat black puppies with blunt noses and foolish faces, turning over on their backs, and blundering under every one's feet.
Dot and Flurry went out to see the cows milked, and came back with long stories of the dear little white, curly-tailed pigs. Flurry wrote to her father the next day, and begged that he would buy her one for a pet. Both she and Dot were indignant when he told them the little pig they admired so much would become a great ugly sow like its mother.
Mrs. Blake, the farmer's wife, took a great fancy to Dot, and begged him to come again, which both the children promised her most earnestly to do. They both carried off spoils of bright red apples to eat on the way.
It was almost dark when we drove home through the narrow lanes; the hedgerows glimmered strangely in the dusk; a fresh sea-ladened wind blew in our faces across the downs, the lights shone from the Preventive station, and across the vague mist glimmered a star or two. How fragrant and still it was, only the soft washing of the waves on the beach to break the silence!
Miss Ruth shivered a little as we rattled down the road leading to the Brambles. Dorcas, mindful of her mistress' delicacy, had lighted a little fire in the inner drawing-room, and had hot coffee waiting for us.
It looked so snug and inviting that the children left it reluctantly to go to bed; but Miss Ruth was inexorable. This was our cozy hour; all through the day we had to devote ourselves to the children—we used to enjoy this quiet time to ourselves. Sometimes I wrote to mother or Carrie, or we mutually took up our books; but oftener we sat and talked as we did on this evening, until Nurse came to remind us of the lateness of the hour.
Mr. Lucas paid us brief visits; he generally came down on Saturday evening and remained until Monday. Miss Ruth could never coax him to stay longer; I think his business distracted him, and kept his trouble at bay. In this quiet place he would have grown restless. He had bought the Brambles to please his wife, and she, and not Miss Ruth, had furnished it. They had spent happy summers there when Flurry was a baby. The little garden had been a wilderness until then; every flower had been planted by his wife, every room bore witness to her charming taste. No wonder he regarded it with such mingled feelings of pain and pleasure.
Mr. Lucas made no difference to our simple routine. Miss Ruth and Flurry used to drive to the little station to meet him, and bring him back in triumph to the seven o'clock nondescript meal, that was neither dinner nor tea, nor supper, but a compound of all. I used to go up with the children after that meal, that he and Miss Ruth might enjoy their chat undisturbed. When I returned to the drawing-room Miss Ruth was invariably alone.