But as he approached the broad spreading King’s Oak—so called from some legendary association with King Charles—the loud laughter of children roused him from his reverie.
Pansy Culver was seated on the ground, threading necklets and bracelets of buttercups and daisies for a group of little children who were capering and laughing round her. She was herself a child still in thought, but verging on womanhood in years; and the soft, bright features, brown with the sun, and lit by two dark, merry eyes, suggested that her father in his fancy for his favourite flowers had given her an appropriate name.
She rose respectfully as Mr Hadleigh approached; and he halted, looking for an instant as if he ought to know her and did not. Then his eyes took in the whole scene—the bright face, the happy children, and the buttercups and daisies. Something in the appearance of the group brought a curiously sad expression to his face. He was contrasting their condition with his own: the little that made them so joyful, and the much that gave him no content.
‘Ah, Pansy,’ he said, ‘what a fortunate girl you are. I wish I could change places with you—and yet no; that is an evil wish. Do you not think so?’
‘I don’t know, sir; and I don’t know how you should wish to change places with me. I do not think many people like you would want to do it.’
A slow nodding movement of his head expressed his pity for her ignorance of how little is required for real happiness, and how the contented ploughman is richer than he who possesses the mines of Golconda without content. It was that sort of movement which accompanies the low sibilating sound of tst-tst-tst.
‘I hope you will never know, child, why a person like me can wish to change places with one like you.’
He passed on slowly, leaving the girl looking after him in wonderment. When she told her father of this singular encounter, he only said: ‘I’m doubtin’ the poor man has something on his mind. But it’s none of our business; and you ken there is only one kind o’ riches that brings happiness.’
Mr Hadleigh spent the rest of that day in his library. He was writing, but not letters. At intervals he would rise and pace the floor, as if agitated by what he wrote. Then he seemed to force himself to sit down again at the desk and continue writing, and would presently repeat the former movement.
By the time that Philip returned, several sheets of closely written manuscript had been carefully locked away in a deed-box, and the box was locked away in a safe which stood in the darkest corner of the room.