‘Why not? It is such a big house, you can’t think. You need not come near the front apartments, if you think we shall be ashamed of you in your working clothes. How came you not to dress up a bit, Sol? Still, Berta won’t mind it much. She says Lord Mountclere must take her as she is, or he is kindly welcome to leave her.’
‘Ah, well! I might have had a word or two to say about that, but the time has gone by for it, worse luck. Perhaps it is best that I have said nothing, and she has had her way. No, I shan’t come in, Picotee. Father is gone, and I am going too.’
‘O Sol!’
‘We are rather put out at her acting like this—father and I and all of us. She might have let us know about it beforehand, even if she is a lady and we what we always was. It wouldn’t have let her down so terrible much to write a line. She might have learnt something that would have led her to take a different step.’
‘But you will see poor Berta? She has done no harm. She was going to write long letters to all of you to-day, explaining her wedding, and how she is going to help us all on in the world.’
Sol paused irresolutely. ‘No, I won’t come in,’ he said. ‘It would disgrace her, for one thing, dressed as I be; more than that, I don’t want to come in. But I should like to see her, if she would like to see me; and I’ll go up there to that little fir plantation, and walk up and down behind it for exactly half-an-hour. She can come out to me there.’ Sol had pointed as he spoke to a knot of young trees that hooded a knoll a little way off.
‘I’ll go and tell her,’ said Picotee.
‘I suppose they will be off somewhere, and she is busy getting ready?’
‘O no. They are not going to travel till next year. Ethelberta does not want to go anywhere; and Lord Mountclere cannot endure this changeable weather in any place but his own house.’
‘Poor fellow!’