"What a disagreeable idea!"

And yet, why should it be?

Resolutely she told herself that Peter was at perfect liberty to fall in love with Meg if he liked, and set herself to listen intelligently to the Vicar's sermon.

Meg started to put her children to bed, only to find that her fertility of imagination in the afternoon was to prove her undoing in the evening; for her memory was by no means as reliable as her powers of invention.

Little Fay urgently demanded the whole cycle of little Mophez' dleams over again. And for the life of her Meg couldn't remember them either in their proper substance or sequence--and this in spite of the most persistent prompting, and she failed utterly to reproduce the entertainment of the afternoon. Both children were disappointed, but little Fay, accustomed as she was to Auntie Jan's undeviating method of narrating "Clipture," was angry as well. She fell into a pa.s.sion of rage and nearly screamed the house down. Since the night of Ayah's departure there had not been such a scene.

Poor Meg vowed (though she knew she would break her vow the very first time she was tempted) that never again would she tamper with Holy Writ, and for some weeks she coldly avoided both Jophez and Mophez as topics of conversation.

Meg could never resist playing at things, and what "Clipture" the children learned from Jan in the morning they insisted on enacting with Meg later in the day.

Sometimes she was seized with misgiving as to the propriety of these representations, but dismissed her doubts as cowardly.

"After all," she explained to Jan, "we only play the very human bits. I never let them pretend to be anybody divine ... and you know the people--in the Old Testament, anyway--were most of them extremely human, not to say disreputable at times."

It is possible that "Clipture's" supreme attraction for the children was that it conveyed the atmosphere of the familiar East. The New Testament was more difficult to play at, but, being equally dramatic, the children couldn't see it.

"Can't we do one teeny miracle?" Tony would beseech, but Meg was firm; she would have nothing to do with either miracles nor yet with angels.

Little Fay ardently desired to be an angel, but Meg wouldn't have it at any price.

"You're not in the least _like_ an angel, you know," she said severely.

"What for?"

"Because angels are _perfectly_ good."

"I could _pletend_ to be puffectly good."

"Let's play Johnny Baptist," suggested the ever-helpful Tony, "and we could pittend to bring in his head on a charger."

"Certainly not," Meg said hastily. "That would be a horrid game."

"Let me be the daughter!" little Fay implored, "and dance in flont of Helod."

This was permitted, and Tony, decorated with William's chain, sat gloomily scowling at the gyrations of "the daughter," who, a.s.sisted by William, danced all over the nursery: and Meg, watching the representation, decided that if the original "daughter" was half as bewitching as this one, there really might have been some faint excuse for Herod.

Hannah had no idea of these goings-on, or she would have expected the roof to fall in and crush them. Yet she, too, was included among the children's prophets, owing to her exact and thorough knowledge of "Clipture." Hannah's favourite part of the Bible was the Book of Daniel, which she knew practically by heart; and her rendering of certain chapters was--though she would have hotly resented the phrase--extremely dramatic.

It is so safe and satisfying to know that your favourite story will run smoothly, clause for clause, and word for word, just as you like it best, and the children were always sure of this with Hannah.

Anne Chitt would listen open-mouthed in astonishment, exclaiming afterwards, "Why, 'Annah, wot a tremenjous lot of Bible verses you 'ave learned to be sure."

The children once tried Anne Chitt as a storyteller, but she was a failure.

As she had been present at several of Hannah's recitals of the Three Children and the burning fiery furnace, they thought it but a modest demand upon her powers. But when--instead of beginning with the sonorous "_Then an herald cried aloud, To you it is commanded, O people, nations and languages_"--when she wholly omitted any reference to "_the sound of cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer_, and all kinds of musick"--and essayed to tell the story in broad Gloucestershire and her own bald words, the disappointed children fell upon her and thumped her rudely upon the back; declaring her story to be "_kutcha_" and she, herself, a _budmash_. Which, being interpreted, meant that her story was most badly made and that she, herself, was a rascal.

Anne Chitt was much offended, and complained tearfully to Jan that she "wouldn't 'ave said nothin' if they'd called 'er or'nery names, but them there Injian words was more than she could abear."

CHAPTER XX

"ONE WAY OF LOVE"

Among the neighbours there was none more a.s.siduous in the matter of calls and other friendly manifestations than Mr. Huntly With.e.l.ls--emphasis on the "ells"--who lived at Guiting Grange, about a couple of miles from Wren's End. Mr. With.e.l.ls was settled at the Grange some years before Miss Janet Ross left her house to Jan, and he was already a person of importance and influence in that part of the county when Anthony Ross and his daughters first spent a whole summer there.

Mr. With.e.l.ls proved most neighbourly. He had artistic leanings himself, and possessed some good pictures; among them, one of Anthony's, which naturally proved a bond of union. He did not even so much as sketch, himself--which Anthony considered another point in his favour--but he was a really skilled photographer, possessed the most elaborate cameras, and obtained quite beautiful results.

Since Jan's return from India he had completely won her heart by taking a great many photographs of the children, pictures delightfully natural, and finished as few amateurs contrive to present them.

It was rumoured in Amber Guiting that Mr. With.e.l.ls' views on the subject of matrimony were "peculiar"; but all the ladies, especially the elderly ladies, were unanimous in declaring that he had a "beautiful mind."

Mrs. Fream, the vicar's wife, timidly confided to Jan that Mr. With.e.l.ls had told her husband that he cared only for "spiritual marriage"-- whatever that might be; and that, as yet, he had met no woman whom he felt would see eye to eye with him on this question. "He doesn't approve of caresses," she added.

"Well, who wants to caress him?" Jan asked bluntly.

Meg declared there was one thing she could not bear about Mr. With.e.l.ls, and that was the way he shook hands, "exactly as if he had no thumbs. If he's so afraid of touching one as all that comes to, why doesn't he let it alone?"

Yet the apparently thumbless hands were constantly occupied in bearing gifts of all kinds to his friends.

In appearance he was dapper, smallish, without being undersized, always immaculately neat in his attire, with a clean-shaven, serious, rather sallow face, which was inclined to be chubby as to the cheeks. He wore double-sighted pince-nez, and no mortal had ever seen him without them.

His favourite writer was Miss Jane Austen, and he deplored the licentious tendency of so much modern literature; frequently, and with flushed countenance, denouncing certain books as an "outrage." He was considered a very well-read man. He disliked anything that was "not quite nice," and detested a strong light, whether it were thrown upon life or landscape; in bright sunshine he always carried a white umbrella lined with green. The game he played best was croquet, and here he was really first cla.s.s; but he was also skilled in every known form of Patience, and played each evening unless he happened to be dining out.

As regards food he was something of a faddist, and on the subject of fresh air almost a monomaniac. He declared that he could not exist for ten minutes in a room with closed windows, and that the smell of apples made him feel positively faint; moreover, he would mention his somewhat numerous antipathies as though there were something peculiarly meritorious in possessing so many. This made his entertainment at any meal a matter of agitated consideration among the ladies of Amber Guiting.

Nevertheless, he kept an excellent and hospitable table himself, and in no way forced his own taste upon others. He disliked the smell of tobacco and hardly ever drank wine, yet he kept a stock of excellent cigars and his cellar was beyond reproach.

He had been observing Jan for several years, and was rapidly coming to the conclusion that she was an "eminently sensible woman." Her grey hair and the way she had managed everything for her father led him to believe that she was many years older than her real age. Recently he had taken to come to Wren's End on one pretext and another almost every day. He was kind and pleasant to the children, who amused and pleased him--especially little Fay; but he was much puzzled by Meg, whom he had known in pre-cap-and-ap.r.o.n days while she was staying at Wren's End.

He couldn't quite place Meg, and there was an occasional glint in her queer eyes that he found disconcerting. He was never comfortable in her society, for he objected to red hair almost as strongly as to a smell of apples.

He really liked the children, and since he knew he couldn't get Jan without them he was beginning to think that in such a big house as the Grange they would not necessarily be much in the way. He knew nothing whatever about Hugo Tancred.

Jan satisfied his fastidious requirements. She was dignified, graceful, and, he considered, of admirable parts. He felt that in a very little while he could imbue Jan with his own views as to the limitations and delicate demarcations of such a marriage as he contemplated.

She was so sensible.

Meanwhile the object of these kind intentions was wholly unaware of them. She was just then very much absorbed in her own affairs and considerably worried about Meg's. For Captain Middleton's week-end was repeated on the following Sat.u.r.day and extended far into the next week.

He came constantly to Wren's End, where the children positively adored him, and he seemed to possess an infallible instinct which led him to the village whensoever Meg and her charges had business there.

On such occasions Meg was often quite rude to Captain Middleton, but the children and William more than atoned for her coldness by the warmth of their welcome, and he attached himself to them.

In fact, as regards the nursery party at Wren's End, Miles strongly resembled William before a fire--you might drive him away ninety and nine times, he always came thrusting back with the same expression of deprecating astonishment that you could be other than delighted to see him.