CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

It is a well-known axiom that misfortunes never come singly, and if those misfortunes are brought about by our own carelessness, they are none the less easy to bear. What were Peggy's feelings then, on going to her key basket, to find it lying empty on the floor, with never a sign of its contents to be seen! Where had she put them? Memory brought back a misty recollection of hurrying through her work the morning before, in order to begin some more congenial occupation, and of having laid down the bunch in careless fashion, thinking the while that she would come back for it later on. But where had she placed it?

Where, oh, where? Up and down the room she raced, to and fro she ran, wringing her hands in distress, and scanning every inch of wall, floor, and ceiling with her eager glance.

"They are staring me in the face most likely; they are right before my eyes, and I can't see them!" she cried in despair. "My keys! My keys!

If I can't find them, I can do nothing. I shall be disgraced for ever!

I should have given out the stores yesterday, but I put it off, miserable, procrastinating wretch that I am! Oh, keys, keys, where are you, keys? Don't hide from me, _please_, I want you so badly--badly!"

But the keys refused to reveal themselves. They were lying contentedly in the bottom of a china vase on the staircase, into which they had been dropped midway in a hasty descent the day before, and, however willing they might have been to obey their mistress's request, they were clearly powerless in the matter, since not even the echo of her voice reached their ears. Peggy searched in a frenzy of impatience, summoned a housemaid to a.s.sist her, and turned the contents of drawers and cupboards upside down upon her bed, but no success greeted her efforts.

At the end of ten minutes' time she was in a more pitiable plight than before, since every likely place had been explored, and not the wildest idea had she where next to repair.

"Wh-at," quoth the housemaid tremblingly, "what shall I say to cook?"

and at that Miss Peggy's eyes sent out a flash which made her look the image of her soldier father.

"Tell her to get on with what she can," she cried. "She shall have the stores in five minutes from now!" and away she flew downstairs, leaving the astonished maid to wonder whether her brain had given way beneath the strain of the occasion.

Get into the store-room, Peggy was determined she _would_! By fair means or foul, that citadel must be stormed, and its treasures brought forth. If the door were closed, the window remained open, and the gardener's ladder lay conveniently at hand. To scale it so far as the second storey could be no difficult task for a girl who had been taught to climb trees and scramble over fences by the most fearless of masculine guides, and once inside the room the rest was easy, for in the first flush of careful forethought, a duplicate key had been provided, which hung on a nail near the door, ready for use if need should arise.

It was characteristic of Peggy that its resting-place should have been inside the room, instead of out, but there it was, and nothing remained but to get possession of it as speedily as possible.

She seized the ladder, then, and dragged it towards the desired spot; it was so top-heavy that it was with difficulty that she could preserve its balance, but she struggled gallantly until it was placed against the sill, and as firmly settled as her inexperience could contrive. To mount it was the next thing, and--what was more difficult--to lower herself safely through the window when it was reached. That was the only part of the proceeding of which she had any dread, but, as it turned out, she was not to attempt it, for before she had ascended two rungs of the ladder a voice called her sharply by name, and she turned to find Hector Darcy standing by her side.

"For pity's sake, Peggy, what are you doing?" he cried, and laid his hand on her arm with a frightened gesture. "Come down this instant!

How dare you be so rash? You don't mean to tell me seriously that you were going to climb that ladder?"

"A great deal more seriously than you imagine!" sighed Peggy dolefully.

"Oh, why did you come and interrupt? You don't know how important it is. How did you come to see me here at all?"

"I was going into the house to give myself a brush up in your father's room, and I saw a glimpse of your dress through the tree."

"And the others--are they coming too? I don't want them to see me; they must not see me."

"No! No! They are sitting with your mother, having a smoke until lunch is ready. You need not be afraid; but tell me what is the matter? What on earth induced you to think of doing such a mad thing?"

Peggy leant against the ladder, and sighed in helpless resignation. She had not yet descended from her perch, so that her face was almost on a level with Hector's own. The hazel eyes had lost their mocking gleam, and the peaked brows were furrowed with distress; it was a very forlorn and disconsolate but withal charming little Peggy who faltered out her humiliating confession.

"I--have been--so naughty, Hector! I'm supposed to be housekeeper, and I forgot to send my orders to the tradesmen last night, so that nothing has arrived this morning. That's my store-room up there, and the key is lost, and I _must_ get in, or you will have nothing to eat. I daren't tell father, for he has warned me to be careful over and over again, and he would be so angry. I'm in a horrible sc.r.a.pe, Hector, and there's no other way out of it. Do please, please, go away and let me get on!"

Hector stared at her, his handsome face blank with astonishment. Given a hundred guineas, he would never have thought of such an explanation, and coming from a home where the advent of a dozen unexpected visitors would have made no confusion, he found it difficult to realise the seriousness of the occasion. There was no doubting Peggy's distress, however, and that was the important point. Whether she was imagining her trouble or not, he must come to her aid, and that as quickly as possible. He stretched out his arms, set her lightly on the ground, and put his own foot on the ladder.

"I will stay and help you," he said firmly; "that will be better than going away! You don't expect me to walk off and leave you to risk your little neck climbing up ladders to provide food for me, do you? Not quite, Peggy, I think! Tell me what to do, and I'll do it. You want me to get into the room up there?"

Peggy looked at him doubtfully. The window was small, and Hector was big; she was afraid he would find it no easy task, but his ready offer relieved and touched her more than she could express, for he had such an acute sense of his own dignity that it meant much for him to perform such a feat.

"You really mean it? It is good of you! You don't mind doing it to help me?"

"I'd do a great deal more than that to please you, Peggy, if you would give me the chance!"

This was dreadful. He was growing sentimental, gazing at her with an expression which filled her with embarra.s.sment, and speaking in a tone which implied even more than the words. She could not snub him in the face of an offered service; the only hope was to be brisk and matter-of- fact.

"Up with you, then!" she cried, stepping back, and waving her hand with imperious gesture. "Time is precious, and I am already far too late.

I'll watch here until you have got through the window. You will find a key hanging on a nail. Open the door with it, and you will find me panting on the threshold!"

No sooner said than done. Hector attempted no more sentimentalities, but mounted the ladder and squeezed his heavy form through the store- room window. It was no easy feat, and Peggy had one or two bad moments as she watched him trembling on the brink. When one foot had already disappeared he seemed for a moment to overbalance, and righted himself only by a vigorous effort, but finally he reached the room, and Peggy ran to meet him, aglow with relief. The key turned in the lock as she approached, and she rushed forward to select her stores with hardly a glance in Hector's direction, though with many eager expressions of thanks.

"You are good! I am relieved! You deserve the Victoria Cross at least.

I was quite agitated watching you, but you managed splendidly- splendidly. Did you get horribly dusty squeezing through?"

"I think I did, rather. I will go to your father's room and have a brush. I'll see you at lunch."

"Yes, yes!" Peggy flew past, her arms full of the tins and bottles for which cook was waiting, leaving the things which were not immediately needed to be selected on a second visit. When she returned, five minutes later, Hector had disappeared, and she had leisure to look around, and feel a pang of shame at the general disorder. A room with more elaborate preparation for order, and less success in attaining it, it would have been difficult to discover. Shelves and cupboards were profusely labelled, and every nook or corner had been dedicated to some special use, but, alas! practice had fallen short of precept, and the labels now served no other purpose than that of confusion, since they had no longer any bearing on their position. Odd morsels of string and paper were littered over the floor, and empty cases, instead of being stored away, were thrown together in an unsightly heap beneath the window. A broken case showed where Hector's foot had descended, and the boards lay kicked aside, the nails sticking out of their jagged edges.

"Misery me! and himself a soldier too, with eyes staring out of every side of him!" sighed Peggy, with a doleful imitation of Mrs Asplin's Irish accent. "If this isn't a lesson to you, Mariquita Saville, there's no hope left! It's most perturbing to have one's secret faults exhibited to the public gaze. It will be quite an age before I dare put on airs to Hector, after this!"

She made a mental vow to set the room in order first thing next day, but at present could think of nothing but lunch; and when her own preparations were completed she rejoined the little party in the garden, and beguiled her father into talking of his past adventures, to prevent the time from hanging too heavily on his hands.

Hector did not appear until at last the gong sounded, and when he did, the first glance at him evoked a chorus of exclamations. His face was white and drawn, and he dragged one foot after him in halting fashion.

In spite of his air of indifference, it was evident that he was in considerable pain, and as soon as he saw that deception could not be kept up, he sank down in a chair, as if thankful to give up the strain.

"Turned my foot a little, that's all! Afraid the ankle has gone wrong!"

"Turned your foot! When did you do that? Must have given it a wrench getting over some of those stiles to-day, I suppose; but you did not speak of it at the time. You felt nothing walking home?"

"No!"

"It has just begun to trouble you now? Pretty badly too, I'm afraid, for you look pale, old fellow. Come, we must have off that boot, and get the leg up on a sofa! It won't do to let it hang down like that.

I'll take you upstairs and doctor it properly, for if there is one thing I do flatter myself I understand, it is how to treat a sprained ankle.

Will you come now, or wait until after lunch?"

"Oh, have your lunch first, please! It will be time enough when you have finished. It would be too bad to take you away now, when Peggy has had so much trouble to prepare a meal for us!"

Hector smiled at the girl in encouraging fashion, but there was no answering smile upon Peggy's face. She stood up stiff and straight, her brows puckered in lines of distress. Hector's evasive answers had not deceived her, for she knew too well that the accident had happened after, not before, he had reached Yew Hedge. In some fashion he had strained his foot in mounting the ladder, and he was now trying to screen her from the result of her carelessness. To allow such a thing as that, however, was not Peggy Saville's way. Her eyes gleamed, and her voice rang out clear and distinct.

"I am afraid it is I who am to blame. I am afraid you hurt yourself climbing into the store-room for me. You were quite well when you came in, so that must have been how it happened. You stepped on a box in getting through, and it gave way beneath you, and turned your ankle.

That was it, wasn't it?"

"I--I'm afraid it was. It was stupid of me not to look where I was going. I thought at the time that it was only a wrench, but it seems to be growing worse."

"Box! Store-room! Climbing! What on earth are you talking about?"

echoed Colonel Saville, looking in bewilderment from one speaker to another. "You two have been up to some mischief together since we arrived. What was it? I don't understand."

"Oh, nothing at all! Peggy wanted to get into the store-room without wasting time looking for a key that was mislaid, and I ran up a ladder and got in by the window. That was all; but unfortunately I put down my foot trusting to alight on the floor, leant all my weight on an empty box, and--this is the consequence!"

It was an extraordinary statement, despite the matter-of-course manner in which the words were uttered. It is not usual in well-conducted households for gentlemen visitors to scramble through windows on the second storey, or for the daughter of the house to utilise such services to remedy the effect of her own carelessness. The parents of ordinary children would have been breathless with horror at listening to such a recital, but it must be remembered that Arthur and Peggy Saville had never been ordinary in their habits. From earliest youth they had scorned the obvious ways of locomotion, had chosen to descend the staircase on a toboggan improvised out of a kitchen tea-tray rather than to walk from step to step like rational beings, and to ascend on the outside rather than the inside of the banisters, so that their belongings had grown to expect the unexpected, and Major Darcy's explanation caused less consternation than might have been expected.

Mrs Saville sighed, and her husband uttered an exclamation of impatience, but both were much more concerned about the condition of the invalid than the cause of his accident, for it was evident that with every moment the pain in the foot grew more severe.

"A pretty bad consequence, it seems to me!" quoth the colonel grimly.

"I'll tell you what it is, my dear fellow; you had better come into the library with me at once, and let me take you in hand. The others can get on with their lunch while Mary brings me what I want. I'll make you comfortable in ten minutes, and then we'll send over a cart to The Larches and get a bag packed, and keep you here for a day or two until you can get about again. Least thing we can do to nurse you round, when you have hurt yourself in our service."