‘That is it!’ cried Eve, with eyes that flashed with delight, and with feet that itched to dance. ‘Oh, give it me back. I understand thoroughly now, thank you, thank you so heartily, dear Mr. Jasper. And now—I have not done. Come up into the garret when I call.’
‘What for? To help you to make more rummage, and find more toys?’
‘No! I want you to push the winnowing machine back, and to make order in the litter I have created.’
Jasper nodded good-humouredly.
Then Eve, rattling her tambourine over her head, ran in; and Jasper resumed his work at the flower-beds. Barbara’s heliotrope, from which she so often wore a fragrant flower, had not been planted many weeks. It was straggling, and needed pinning down. Her seedling asters had not been pricked out in a bed, and they were crowding each other in their box. He took them out and divided their interlaced roots.
‘Mr. Jasper!’ A little face was peeping out of the small window in the gable that lighted the attic. He looked up, waved his hand, and laid down the young asters with a sigh, but covered their roots with earth before leaving them.
Then he washed his hands at the Abbot’s Well, and slowly ascended the stair to the attic. It was a newel stone flight, very narrow, in the thickness of the wall.
When he reached the top he threw up a trap in the floor, and pushed his head through.
Then, indeed, he was surprised. The inconsiderate Eve had taken some candle ends and stuck them on the binding beam of the roof, and lighted them. They cast a yellow radiance through the vast space, without illumining its recesses. All was indistinct save within the radius of a few feet around the candles. In the far-off blackness was one silvery grey square of light—the little gable window. On the floor the rafter cast its shadow as a bar of ink.
Jasper was not surprised at the illumination, though vexed at the careless manner in which Eve had created it. What surprised him was the appearance of the young girl. She was transfigured. She was dressed in a saffron-yellow skirt with a crimson lattice of ribbon over it, fastened with bows, and covered with spangles. She wore a crimson velvet bodice, glittering with gold lace and bullion thread embroidery. But her eyes sparkled brighter than the tarnished spangles.